


Plague of Evil

by MrMammon



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Gore, Gen, Psychological Horror, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-03-26 12:32:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19005874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrMammon/pseuds/MrMammon
Summary: Long abandoned Blackfield Island, located off the coast of Maine, is shrouded in myth and mystery. After reporting a mysterious plague ravaging the population and quarantining themselves, all contact with the island was lost. When rescuers finally reached the island, there was no trace of the 2,000 inhabitants. What happened?





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1  
It was a sunny, and unseasonably (but pleasantly) warm, Friday morning in the middle of December, and I was walking down the hall towards my office, my arms full of finals that needed to be graded. It was that blissful end of semester time of year, when students and professors alike would soon be free to attend to their own devices over winter break. This particular break was something I was looking forward to immensely, it being the first time I would go out on a solo project with the funding of my department behind me. When the familiar voice first called out to me, every muscle in my body tensed.

"Doctor Barrows, Doctor Barrows!"

I turned to see a dark haired girl running towards me through the flow of overworked, sweaty undergrads, her backpack bouncing around wildly behind her. I recognized her as one of my better students, Michelle Harrison. I had a feeling about what she wanted, and I hated to do it, but she was about to be very disappointed. She took a moment to catch her breath before continuing, the current of students in the hallway flowing around us without stopping.

"Doctor, I heard you were heading out to New England next week and going to Blackfield. Will you be taking anyone with you?" she looked at me hopefully.

I gave her my best smile, "Well, you heard right, but I'm afraid I'm going it alone—it's all the department would afford me since Blackfield isn't exactly a high priority area of research. Most folks see it as a pretty open and shut case even with the lack of any real evidence, only the locals tell the interesting stories, though who knows how many of them actually believe it. The still rather new CDC, for the time, declared the population wiped out by disease, officially tuberculosis, and closed the case."

A look of rejection came across Michelle's face and she slumped, shoulders down. "B-But I can pay my own way, I-,"

I held up a hand, which was dangerous considering how much I was carrying, "That's all fine and good, but I can't let you do that. I do have a group study trip over the summer that you can sign up for, but I'm afraid I go this one alone." In reality, I didn't want to have to babysit during the trip, because no doubt word would spread and more would want to come along. They would all just get in my way, in the end.

She perked up a little at the mention of my summer course, which relieved me. "Okay!" She adjusted the rather heavy looking backpack. "I hope you find something interesting over the break," she said cheerfully and she turned on her heels and bounded down the hall, maneuvering against the flow of her peers like a salmon going upriver.

"Only after I get these damn essays graded," I muttered under my breath, trying not to let the pleasant smile on my face falter.

I sat in my office in total silence, reading the Mythology 101 essays while sipping a half-cold mug of coffee. It was how I did things, and I was always a slave to routine. When my office phone began to screech, I nearly spilled my drink all over the very average paper I was reading.

"Y'ello, this is Doc Barrows," I gave my usual greetings.

"Good afternoon, Sydney," a familiar voice said on the other end. It was the head of my department, William Jacobs.

I sat down my coffee and straightened in my chair, "Afternoon, sir, what can I do for you?" Thankfully most of my colleagues preferred to remain informal, but one must remember to always treat Dr. Jacobs with that old time Southern Respect.

There was a muted cough and then, "Are you fully prepared for your trip? Your flight to Portland leaves Monday morning…"

Of course it did, and I knew this because I was the one who did all the planning for the trip. I didn't explain this to Dr. Jacobs, he just liked to feel as if he had more control over everyone under him than he really did. "Yes, sir, and I'm getting a cab from the airport all the way to Allenstown, where I'll find a local to ferry me across to the island and…"

"Yes, yes," Dr. Jacobs said, and I could picture him obsessively checking his fingernails as he spoke. "Good luck to you, Sydney, you're going to need it," and then he hung up.

I stared into the receiver then gently dropped into its cradle. Dr. Jacobs did not believe, like so many others, that my little trip was going to do any good. But, thankfully, he needed a reason to spend department money and I had provided the best excuse. Having very few of my fellows show confidence in my theories was not so disconcerting for me, being very used to having my obsession with fairy tales taken less-than-seriously by those around me.

It's just that the case of Blackfield Island was a special one for me, because it is the closest thing to a modern day Roanoke that there is, and being able to discern the truth from the fiction would be a monumental find for a notorious mystery.

In nineteen-fifty-three, Blackfield Island had a recorded population of 2,343. One year later, it was zero. In the summer of '53 the mainland got a radio transmission from the Blackfield port authority that an illness was running rampant amongst the islanders and that they were shutting down the ferry services until it came under control. It obviously never did, as that was the last and only message to come from Blackfield about the whole ordeal.

When a "fleet" of fishing vessels from nearby Allenstown arrived on the island after five weeks, they found Blackfield completely barren of any life. No trace of animals or people to be found. Even the waters in the immediate area around the island were clear of any sea life. Meals were found half-eaten; cars found with their gas tanks empty and their doors open. One small neighborhood was nearly burnt to the ground because of an oven that had been left on.

Theories ranged from half the population dying and the other half throwing itself into the sea, to the Devil himself taking all of Blackfield to Hell due to sins of the their ancestors. I found the former to be too romantic and the latter too unrealistic. But I read about Blackfield as an undergraduate and found myself obsessed with it ever since. Fifteen years of my life, waiting for the moment that would come Monday afternoon. But until then, until at least Sunday, I would be busy reading these damn papers.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

My plane landed in Portland during a lull in a storm that gripped the area. I'm no strange to flying, but experiencing nasty weather in a heavy machine that flies through the air is never a good experience. I walked through the terminal wrapped up tightly in my heavy wool jacket and jeans. It wasn't very crowded for being so close to Christmas, I must have just gotten ahead of the rush. The baggage claim was made up of mostly people I recognized from my own flight, and (despite my incessant worrying) my luggage showed up as it should have. I was dragging it behind me on its tiny wheels when the first peel of thunder rumbled overhead.

When I stepped outside under the awning I was greeted by a sheet of heavy rain that made anything just outside my little habitat lost in the grey curtain. Despite my heavy dressing, I couldn't help but shiver. From the greyness a yellow shaped blob came lurching, stopping in front of the awning at the curb where I stood. It was a cab, driven by an older man with an impressive five o'clock shadow and a tweed cap. I smiled at the cheesiness of it all. The driver's door opened with a rusty squeal and the portly man slid out, unaffected by the rain. He flashed me a toothy smile and tipped his hat in my direction.

"Lovely afternoon, ain't it?" he laughed as he pulled some unseen lever to open the trunk of his rust bucket. I moved to lift my suitcases into it but he intercepted me and took over. He threw them in and slammed the trunk before they could get too wet. Then he opened the back passenger door and motioned for me to get in. "Where are you headed? He asked as I went by, shutting the door before I could answer.

He rushed around and jumped back behind the wheel, "Allenstown," I responded as he shifted into drive, causing the vehicle to lurch forward.

The man guided the car out into the rain and turned on the wipers, which scratched annoyingly against the windshield for several seconds before turning into a smooth, almost hypnotic, motion. He looked through his rearview mirror at me, "Quite a drive from here," he began.

"Money isn't a problem," I replied, confused when he chuckled and shook his head.

"A long drive, I mean, for a whole lotta nothing. There's barely a hotel and it's populated by a bunch of dreary fishermen and their families. What're you going all the way out there for, if you don't mind me asking?"

I tried to stop the smile, but it forced its way onto my lips anyway, "I'm coming to study Blackfield Island."

The driver's eyebrows went up comically, "You don't say…some kinda…CDC government thing, is it?" Suspicion dripped heavily in his tone. I could tell I was already going to be a topic he would love discussing with his pals down at the pub.

"No, no, nothing like that. I am a doctor, but my degree is in American Mythology and Folklore. I spend my time learning stories and figuring out the truth behind them. You must know about Blackfield," he nodded, "I'm sure there have been others before me, but I plan on going to the island to try and find out what exactly happened."

"I reckon that the TB thing ain't true then?" the cabbie drifted onto Interstate 95 going north, the rain not lessening in the slightest.

Oh, yes, he was going to get a lot of mileage from what I told him. Out-of-Stater coming in to revive an old legend. "Not necessarily, it could be. But if it were true, why were no bodies found? Tuberculosis doesn't melt the human body after it kills. How did it work through the population so quickly? It might take the disease months to kill a single person, or even years depending on if it goes into remission or not, and there was a vaccine for it even back then. I'm not some crazy conspiracy nut, but I don't think it was just a rampant bacteria that took out Blackfield."

The cabbie was silent then, and I took that time to close my eyes and concentrate on the sound of the rain pouring over the car. The rushing sound was a white noise for me, calm and relaxing. I felt myself just starting to drift away when the cabbie spoke again.

"Ya know, when I think about it, you're right. I never really put too much thought into what happened back then, I was just a toddler when it happened. And most normal folk never go to the island now, anymore. Maybe a few rowdy teenagers looking to prove their bravery and get away from us adults to drink a bit of beer, smoke a little reefer, maybe."

I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, "Fear of the disease still lingering kept the rescuers, and later the CDC, from doing too much exploring on the island, to see if there might have been any real hint of what happened. My plan is to spend the next month rummaging around the ruins for physical evidence, like journals, personal diaries or newspapers. If those teenagers you mentioned haven't done too much damage to the place, that is."

"And then there's that rich fella that tried to build a place in the eighties," the cabbie added.

I was momentarily stunned, that wasn't something I had read up on, "Are you…sure that happened? I've found no record of it anywhere I've looked."

"Oh ayuh," the cabbie replied, using that word I thought Maine-folk would only really use in Stephen King novels. "Some crazy dude, 'S'….'S'-something, real unusual name. Reckon if you talk to the locals, you'll get it right. The Flailing Lobster is the place to go in Allenstown, if'n you care for that kinda thing. Drinkin', I mean. Good place for gossip, too. I reckon you're staying at that motel on the outskirts?"  
I told him I was and things fell into sweet silence once more, when I finally drifted off to sleep, the lightning and thunder had become more frequent.

I awoke with a start as the cab came to a screeching halt and the rain was muted by the awning that stuck out over the entrance to the Motel 6. I rubbed my eyes as the cabbie slid out of his seat and opened the trunk. I thanked the man for his services, and for the brief conversation—and apologized for my tiredness. He tipped his cap and was off into the grey late morning.

I stood outside for a few minutes, taking in the New England air. Through the rain and over the smell of wet concrete I got hints of the sea, and looked eastward to see the Allenstown docks, filled with dozens of fishing boats bobbing up and down in the tumultuous waters.

The motel was your standard affair, clean and well kept. The weird floral patterned carpet looked good, if strange. Behind the front desk sat a very bored looking young woman whose face was illuminated by the computer she was staring at with half open eyes. What an exciting life these Allenstown folk must lead.

When I approached the desk she glanced away from the screen then back again. Then back at me with a look of surprise. She stood up from her chair hard enough to knock it back a few feet.  
"O-Oh! Good afternoon," she said.

I smiled. I would probably be bored out of my mind working here too. "Sydney Barrow, I've got a reservation…" I pulled out my ID and slid it across the countertop.  
As the girl typed away on her computer, glancing between my driver's license and the screen, she asked, "Wow, we don't get many tourists, much less…out of state tourists. If you don't mind, can I ask what you're doing here?"

And so it began, I should have expected this, but for some reason I didn't. I went through my spiel mechanically, if she was a local maybe I could get a head start on my information gathering with her. She finished checking me in and was listening with wide eyes, and a grin on her lips.

"Wow! It's been, like, a real long time since anyone wanted to go to that place!" she then proceeded to explain the local legends with me, much as the taxi driver had, only this time I didn't bring up anything that might make her question the stories. When I asked her about the "crazy rich dude" she frowned and tapped her chin, "I…think I remember something about that. I was a baby when he came, but my Dad said the guy paid a bunch of townsfolk to help as movers, and that a couple of his friends got, like, two thousand bucks just to move some furniture across the water. Big ol' barges came through the port that whole spring and summer, carrying construction equipment and tons of lumber."

"Sounds like quite the lucrative deal for little ol' Allenstown," I said, leaning on the counter now, "You wouldn't happen to remember this guy's name, would you?" I looked at her expectantly.  
She shifted uneasily under my gaze, "Um…I'm sorry, I don't. But there is someone else I can tell you about."

My interest was finally piqued. I'd barely started my journey and I was already learning new information. It set a good precedent. "I was not aware there was 'anyone else,'" I commented.  
The front desk girl sat back down and started in on her tale, "About fifteen years ago one a local named Craig Stone snapped a tether and decided to go live on Blackfield. He had lost a cousin and uncle from the plague and never really gotten over it. He was eccentric to begin with, I hear, so no one was surprised when he just packed up all his things, got in his little fishing boat and went on over. He would come back every once in a while for supplies, saying that he built himself a cabin out in the woods in the center of the island and then one day, after, I guess, like six months he stopped coming. Local sheriff went out to the island to try and find him and found Craig's boat crashed up on the beach. He went up to where the cabin was supposed to be but…Craig wasn't there. Nowhere to be found."  
"So…just like his family, then?"

The girl nodded, and I could tell her attention was drifting back to whatever she had been doing before I showed up, bored of me and my curiousness about local nonsense. I bid her farewell and set off to my room, which was thankfully on the first floor. Carrying my two massive suitcases up any amount of stairs would have been a pain in the ass.  
My room was a good enough. The sheets on the bed were clean and the TV was a decent thirty-two inches and sitting upon the dresser. A pearl white mini-fridge sat on the floor next to the dresser and on top of it was a microwave. I looked inside of it and was very thankful to find it clean. I lugged my two suitcases onto the king size bed and began to unpack, this is where I would be living for the next month so I was going to make it as homely as possible.

The storm didn't change at all outside while I unpacked, the wind still going strong, and whipping the trees outside my window back and forth violently. I shoved my empty suitcases into the coat closet and crawled onto the bed, opting to stare at the ceiling rather than turn on the television. I made plans to go out and find the Flailing Lobster for information gather, and to also try and hire someone out to take me to the island.

Next to the alarm clock—1:30, it read-and lamp on the side table was a little plastic rack filled with brochures for Allenstown, I picked through them and was relieved to find a local map. I found the Flailing Lobster almost immediately as it was marked on the map by the big crustacean that shared its name. What I was surprised by, and yet at the same time not, was that Allenstown had a McDonalds, a Sonic, and a Wal-Mart. Even Republic (Missouri) where I grew up had those, so I guess it was really only a shock to learn that small towns all over were pretty much the same in many aspects. Though I always preferred the Dairy Crest in nearby Greystone to the Sonic, it was family owned and operated from since before I was born and was a local icon on the highway.

I resolved to wait until the storm died down, bringing up the local weather forecast on my phone. "Rain throughout the day" it said, and I couldn't help but sigh. I put my phone on the side table and closed my eyes, ruminating on the two new piece of information I'd learned.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The rain had lightened significantly by three that afternoon, with the lightning and thunder moving off to the north. Refreshed by my after flight nap, I threw on my coat, grabbed the little black umbrella I had the foresight to bring, and started my walk into Allenstown proper, the local map tucked into one of the inside pockets of my jacket. The girl at the front desk had been replaced by a well-dressed middle aged man, probably the manager, who gave me a smile and a nod as I walked by. I waved a bit and pushed my way out the double front doors. A cool gust of wind caused a shiver to dance up and down my spine.

The road down to "Main Street" (doesn't every town and city have one of these?) was a long, winding affair. I walked along the cracked sidewalk, conscious of oncoming cars that could possibly splash me as they came speeding past. But none did. I was mostly kept company by overgrown, dying bushes sagging under the weight of the falling water. I crested a hill and found that I could look down on most of Allenstown. There was a stark contrast between different sections of the city, places where old buildings suddenly became newer, brighter. Almost right in the middle there was a towering sign with the image of a cartoony lobster that looked like it was supposed to be dancing. An interesting choice for a bar, I thought.

I passed a green sign that said "Allenstown City Limits" and things got a little better. The road changed from a pale grey to a healthy black, and the foliage seemed reasonably kept in check. That's also when I encountered the first car. Bright headlights appeared over the next hill and came rushing towards me. I moved further away from the curb as the blue car approached, and through the rain I saw a serious looking man behind the wheel. He must have taken a moment to look at me because as he got close he slowed down significantly without quite stopping. I didn't turn around to acknowledge him.

The first thing I encountered once the road flattened out was a grey building with an equally grey roof. The white painted letters on the big glass storefront said this was Len's Antiques and Oddities. I hesitated in front of the window, gazing into the lit innards and seeing shelf upon shelf of dusty, colorful, and rusty trinkets, books and clothes. I couldn't help but grin as I spotted the grandfatherly figure sitting behind the cash register reading a newspaper that sagged in his hands as he struggled to stay awake. Len, I presumed. I passed by the front door and saw the hours posted in a similar font to the front window and made a note of them. In my time here, I would have to give ol' Len's a look through.

I was about to walk away when a sudden idea hit me. Len, if he was that old man, would know about Craig Stone, and maybe even the "crazy rich dude."

A bell above the door jingled as I pushed my way into the shop, and I was immediately embraced in by the warm air circulating throughout. I closed my umbrella, pointing it down and letting it drip a bit onto the plastic mat before stepping further inside. The interior smelled like a grandparent's house-musty and dusty and a bit sweet and sour. There was also a hint of antiseptic and the floor looked extra shiny under the fluorescent lighting.

I walked towards the counter, the old man apparently not hearing my footsteps. I passed through a narrow row of shelves, finding myself surrounded by knickknacks of all flavors. Salt and pepper shakers that looked like fish; a little jewelry box, open and displaying a half gone figure of a ballerina standing with her arms over her head, I imagined it made music at one point. There was even a row of half a dozen porcelain dolls whose creepy painted eyes had faded with time, and one was missing most of its black curly hair. As I reached the counter I saw that there were some things in the darker area behind it, like some kind of private or exotic stock reserved for only the special customers. It was there that I spotted the lamp shaped like a little sailboat, painted a bright yellow with a red trim. I can't explain why, but looking at that gave me the chills more so than anything else in the store.

Outside thunder boomed overhead, causing the lights to flicker, which made the old man snap awake and lower his paper to look up at the ceiling with a frown. I cleared my throat and he lowered his gaze. He squinted at me, adjusting his spectacles, "Well, hello there!" he said in a trembling voice, and I noticed his hands were shaking as he folded the paper and sat it down on the counter. I realized then that he was much older than I had originally estimated, he must have at least been in his early eighties, "You ain't from around here," he observed, and I nodded already tiring of being told that, "What can I do for ya?" He was much skinnier close up than I had first imagined, his clothes hung loosely over his bony frame.

"I'm Doctor Sydney Barrow, I'm from Missouri State University. I came to your little corner of the world to do some research on Blackfield Island," I saw him flinch a bit when I said the name, but the smile didn't otherwise leave his face, "And, well, I was hoping maybe you could help me out. I'm, uh, assuming you are the 'Len' from the sign."

"Saw me as you walked by and figured an old timer like me might know a thing or two, eh?" he laughed, "You were right, name's Lenny Rose. I'm somewhat of an amateur historian for Allenstown, I suppose. Comes with owning a place like this." He leaned forward, resting his bony elbows on the counter. His stark white hair was wild and untamed, a small circle of baldness resting right in the middle of it all. He wore a red and black plaid shirt with black buttons and had several different kinds of pens sticking out of the breast pocket.

"I've learned a couple of new things since I landed here this morning," I explained. "About Craig Stone and some…wealthy man who tried to build an estate on the island a while ago?"

The old man nodded silent as I talked, watching me with his grey eyes, "Ah, you mean Harken Stratos. Unusual name, isn't it? I remember him quite clearly. Looked to be forty-five or so, blonde hair all slicked back, and he always wore sunglasses, even inside and when it was cloudy and foggy. Very eccentric fella, had more money than anyone has any business having, though he never exactly told anyone what it was he did for a living. I figure it must have been something to do with computers. He even had one of them big abomination cellphones that in-the-know folk had. Stratos wanted a place he could go to be alone and figured since Blackfield was supposed to be 'cursed,' it'd make the perfect spot for a 'summer home.' This was, oh, the late eighties, I think maybe '88 or '89."

I was enraptured, giddy butterflies fluttering in the pit of my stomach. These weird stories were what I lived for, and this man was an absolute fount of information.

The old man took notice of my captured state and went on as if he were preaching, "He paid some of the dock boys a whole bunch of money to help him get furniture and things across the water, and they was more than happy to do it, even if most other folk were against setting a single toe on Blackfield. We never saw any of the actual construction men, though. Just the ships they brought their big machines in on. They was coming and going for months an' months, hauling in their own lumber and metal. Then one day they just didn't come, and we never saw them again. Ol' Stratos built his little paradise on the side of the island facing away from the mainland, saying it was better to look out onto the open sea. He'd come down every once in a while, if'n he was doing something like meeting one of his money men. Then one day that stopped too."

By this point I had produced my notepad from an inside pocket and was scribbling down notes as Len spoke.

"No one wanted to go check on 'im, but we figured it was necessary…" the old man stopped and I looked up to see that he had folded his hands and was looking down at them. I was about to ask if he was alright but then he continued, "A dozen men went over to the island and followed the road," this came out as rahd, "around up to the estate….and found that it never even got finished. Just sitting up there on the hill half done, empty machines and piles of unused lumber and steel scattered all around. And no sign of Stratos or any of the construction workers. Was a big mess, FBI came down and did some investigating and interrogating but never told any of us anything, just packed up after a couple weeks and went on their merry way."

Now I was disturbed that I hadn't heard about this before. "They just…left things?"

Len shrugged, looking like a scarecrow that had been slightly jostled by a gust of wind, "Dunno, that was the last time anyone really went that far into the island, 'cept for Craig, of course." He looked at me wearily, "The poor fella was a friend of mine, ya see." I nodded sympathetically, "Lost what little family he had back in fifty-three, his mother's brother and his son."

"The girl up at the hotel told me a bit about that, said he built his own cabin and then stopped coming back for supplies, and the sheriff…"

"Found Craig's boat smashed up on the shore, ayuh," there was that word again, "and an empty cabin out in the woods, same as everything else. This was back in '96."

I noticed his succinctness on the subject and decided to press him on it, "Just…empty? No signs of violence, or…"

Len shook his head, raising a hand to stop me, "Like I said, Craig was a…good friend of mine," I noticed then that his eyes were a bit moister than they had been when we first started talking, "He'd just not been the same since the outbreak, and it was hard for him to accept that they'd just disappeared, not even leaving bodies behind to bury. His cabin was empty. Just that." His face darkened, and his tone changed to one of utter seriousness, "Now listen, friend, you shouldn't be going about asking too many deep questions about Blackfield, you'll mainly just get versions of the stories I just told ya. That island is a…dark place, cursed." He leaned forward on his elbows, causing him to have to look up to stare into my face, "Now you just might think of me as some crazy old man, and while that may be sorta true, I'm telling you this for your own good. Do not go to the island. Not one sane person in Allenstown who'd agree to take you anyway. Go to the library, do your research and write your damn paper or whatever it is you're doing and leave it at that."

I didn't know what to say, and I don't get left speechless very often. Behind Len the sailboat lamp flickered on, casting a yellow light, illuminating the back room a bit. Len whirled around, almost falling off the narrow wooden stool, and the light went out. He turned back to me slowly, spectacles teetering dangerously on the end of his nose. His demeanor had taken away the goofy look of his hair and given it an almost crazy prospector quality.

Then Len sighed, deflating a bit and looking even skinnier than before, "Sorry about that, Doc," he said quietly, pushing his glasses back up.

I was not deterred by the event, but now more determined than ever before. "It's okay, I understand the island is a touchy subject," I reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a twenty dollar bill. I placed it on the counter and slid it across, "For your trouble."

"Now you don't have to do that," the old man said, "Not a lot of stuff worth twenty bucks in here but…"

I looked over his shoulder at the lamp.

"Not that, though," he said a bit more seriously.

"Think of this as payment for the information then," I said, giving him a little wave and stepping away from the counter before he could say anymore.

As the bell on the door jingled over my head I could feel his gaze burning between my shoulder blades. A blast of cool, wet wind drew me back into reality.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The wind was up again by the time I reached the Flailing Lobster, and I had almost grown used to the weird stares as well. The interior of the place was pleasantly warm, like Len's, and was mostly empty, though I expected it got pretty busy after five o'clock rolled around. Tables and booths were scattered across the floor and along the wall, which was filled with old black and white pictures in wooden frames and several different triangle shaped flags for the local school sports teams. The bar was long enough to accommodate fifteen chairs. A balding man with quite the impressive belly stood behind the bar, holding an empty glass, his eyes flickered to me as I walked in and he gave me a silent nod. In the back, sitting in a booth by himself, was the palest man I had ever seen in my life. He looked like illness incarnate. Dark circles under his dark colored eyes, messy black beard covering most of his face and obscuring his mouth completely. He was looking at me, and I felt it.

As I shook the rain from my hair, and umbrella, trying to ignore the pale man, a middle aged woman with blonde dyed hair (her brownish roots very apparent) walked up to me wearing a black and dress and apron. She smiled and I could tell she was a heavy smoker, her teeth stained a sick shade of yellow. "Marlene" read the worn down tag just below her collar.

"Welcome, stranger, to the Flailin' Lobster!" her fake cheeriness was almost too much for me to take. "You picked a fine time of year to come wandering about." She took a step to the side and beckoned for me to follow.

"A mixture of business and pleasure," I commented as I walked behind her, "How's the saying go? If you really enjoy your job it isn't really like work at all?"

She sat me at the bar and the fat barkeep was down at the other end polishing a glass in the big steel sink. She scoffed, "I wouldn't know anything about that, hon." A small plastic menu decorated with the cartoony dancing lobster mascot was put before me and the waitress walked off as the barkeep sidled up in front of me.

"Ain't a lotta folk come through Allenstown for business that ain't widely known to almost everyone around first," he said, staring at me with dark brown eyes. His bald head shined even in the dim light.

I opened the menu and looked it over, "It's nothing official, or even that big a deal. More a personal thing, really, in the end. Academic work," I saw a section called "local brews" and tapped on it with a finger, "Give me a bottle of whichever of these is the best," and he nodded and ducked behind the bar, where I could hear him rattling around.

He popped up ten seconds later and put a sweating brown glass bottle down in front of me. The top popped off with an audible hiss. I'd never been much of a beer drinker, but I wanted to make a good impression. The brand was one I didn't recognize, "Gold's Thunderbolt IPA." However, I did recognize the little brand symbol printed on the back, a shining gold coin. It was the symbol of a pharmaceutical company. Weird for them to also be into beer brewing. The beer itself was bearable, heavy and hoppy with a hint of orange that lingered on my tongue after swallowing.

The bartender was looking at me expectantly so after down a few more mouthfuls I gave him the speech. When I mentioned Blackfield his eyes twitched in a similar manner to Len's. I really hadn't anticipated Blackfield being that big of a deal around here.

"Well, it ain't my place to tell ya what you can and can't do, friend," the bartender was now looking away from me, trying to make it seem like he wasn't purposefully avoiding my gaze. "It'll be a matter of whether you wanna swim there or not, because there won't be anybody who'll be willing to take ya over there." I opened my mouth but he continued, "No matter how much ya offer them."

Suddenly a shadow came over me and the bartender back in my direction with shock in his eyes. "I'll take yah," said a deep, grumbly voice from my back.

I turned around, the stool squeaking beneath me, and saw the pale man in the fisherman's jacket standing there, looking down at me. He smelled heavily of fish and seawater, and looked like some kind of risen sailor come from the depths to exact his revenge.

"Now wait a minute, Harvey," the bartender began, reaching out with a meaty hand.

"Fifty bucks, an' I'll take ya over to Blackfield," Harvey said, and I could smell the alcohol on his breath. His skin was a pallid color that looked almost green under the bar lights. His jacket was too big, as were the torn up jeans. He wore discolored boots that looked almost as old as me. "Half up front, other half when we get there."

"That include a trip back?" I asked, setting my half empty beer bottle down on the counter.

"…fifty to bring you back, too, if'n you even make it through the whole day." The tips of Harvey's lips twitched and his eyes narrowed slightly.

"Don't you listen to this old drunk," the bartender warned, sounding genuinely worried.

"Shut yer mouth, Blake," Harvey grunted, "If'n they wanna go over, they can go over. Won't be no one's fault when…if somethin' bad happens." There was an edge to his voice that made me uncomfortable.

"It's obvious where you land on the spectrum of stories about the island," I said, trying to break through the thick cloud of tension that had settled over the bar all at once.

"There's only one side to it, stranger," Harvey said without looking at me, still focused on Blake the bartender. "Bad shit happened over there, and still does, though you won't hear anyone round here admit it. I reckon you already know all 'bout Stratos and Stone?" I nodded and he made a strange noise in the back of his throat that sounded a bit like laughter, "What about when-."

Blake slapped his hand on the counter, making me jump and Harvey's mouth snap shut. "Don't you go no further, Harvey," Blake warned. If a big man like him had told me to keep my mouth shut I would not have argued, but Harvey continued defiantly.

"Ten years ago a buncha teenagers went over to Blackfield on one of their daddy's vessels. Typical bullshit, gettin' drunk and celebrating graduation and all the big dreams of success. How they was gonna get outta this town and make it big." Harvey was grinning now, his teeth a mess of black and yellow rot, his breath was foul but I pushed through, "Went over one night. Never came back."

"Harvey," Blake's hands were clenched into fists, his knuckles white.

"Folks around here know what happened, so we didn't even bother to go look for 'em. Ten kids torn away in the prime of their lives." Harvey lowered his head, causing the brim of his wide hat to fall over most of his face.

Ten?! I could scarcely believe it, "B-But," I stuttered, "Something like that, ten teenagers going missing all at once…that's a news story at a national level, why didn't-,"

It was Blake who interrupted me, "Cuz that ain't something we let get out," his tone was flat, and I turned to see moisture building up in the corners of his eyes. "One of them was my son, Tony." He was glaring at Harvey, almost accusingly, "I raised that boy right, taught him never to even think about that god damned place. But…kids will be kids, in the end, I just…" He stopped to cough, trying to disguise the sob that he couldn't hold back.

I felt like a true intruder now, the self-image of "neutral observer" shattered by this rock of truth. "I'm, I'm really sorry," I said, but my curiosity was not sated, in fact this had only fed it, but I didn't want to show it.

"So you come to the docks tomorrow morning, seven sharp," Harvey said. His gravelly voice was like nails on a chalkboard to my ears, "Then you can see for yourself, get your…academic curiosity nice and satisfied." He reached around me and slapped a wadded bunch of faded bills onto the counter and turned towards the door, coat flapping loudly. "See ya tomorrow, Blake." He called back as he pushed the door open, letting the wind blow in some rain.

"Yeah," Blake said with little emotion, "See ya tomorrow." He leaned against the counter, staring at the floor.

I finished my beer and was getting ready to pay when Blake told me to hold off for a second. I watched him, confused, as he went through a steel door behind the bar. Several minutes later he came walking out with a plate piled high with French fries and one of the biggest, greasiest burgers I had ever seen in my life.

He sat it down in front of me, "I reckon now that Harvey is gonna be your ride, nothing's gonna stop you from going over to Blackfield," he said, "So take this, on the house."  
The words came out before I could stop them, "A last meal, is it?"

He grinned, but it looked more sad than anything, "If you want to, sure. But I do sincerely hope you find what you're looking for and can make it back safely."

His warning worried me, but the smell of the burger distracted me. As I bit into it, juices flooded my mouth and reminded me of how hungry I really was. It was the best tasting burger I'd ever had.

After my enormous meal, I spent the rest of the day braving the storm and wandering around town. I went to the Wal-Mart and picked up a few things: extra flashlight, rubber gloves, batteries, a few bottles of water, and some protein bars. I made plans to come back later and do a more comprehensive grocery run when the weather improved. The cashier was a young man who, like almost everyone else, eyed me funny, but he didn't engage beyond the required "Hi, how are you?" stuff he had probably been trained to say.  
The storm had turned into a light shower by the time I was out of the store, thankfully, and I got back to the motel with my supplies relatively dry and intact. I put the water in the fridge and the protein bars in the microwave-it would have to do as a pantry for now.

As the clock on the nightstand ticked over to eight, I lay on my bed staring at my phone, going through emails and checking the local news back home. The TV was on, and I had spent several minutes making myself familiar with the layout of the channels. It's surreal to think about abstractly, but having to relearn what national stations go with what new number is a lot like trying to learn to walk again. You live with things one way most, or all of, your life and just a few miles away from your nest things it's the small things that are different, not the big important things.

The weather would be clear for the next couple of weeks, if the local weather was to be believed, but the temperatures would remain in the upper forties for the highs. That wasn't too different from home, at least.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The air was still and crisp the next morning as I walked down to the Allenstown docks with my bulging backpack. There was a wall of fog roiling over the waters that hadn't been in the forecast but I had the feeling Harvey was quite the expert navigator. The town was unsettlingly quiet for seven in the morning, at least by my "big city" standards. Not that Springfield is by any means a big city, but I didn't even see one car or one person out on the streets of Allenstown during my ten minute walk from the hotel to the dock. The roads became narrower and more twisted the further down into the town I went. The ancient buildings unable to hide their age behind the refurbished roofs and aluminum siding. Pine trees sprouted between buildings sporadically and were clustered around the rocks down near the shore. The sound of the waves breaking against the shore, of the dock creaking and the boats gently bobbing, was like heaven to my ears. Peaceful.

I saw Harvey almost as soon as I stepped onto the rickety wooden planks, standing by a small aluminum craft at the far end, near where the craggy cape came round and formed a sort of natural barrier. He looked as disheveled as ever, standing completely still like some kind deranged scarecrow right up until I was almost upon him.

"Good morning," I said, trying not to sound too cheery, though I was very excited for my first foray to Blackfield.

"Is it?" Harvey grunted, looking me up and down, "Ya got my money?" I dug into my pocket and handed him the first twenty five of the day. He looked the bills over and stuffed them into one of the numerous pockets of his black coat. "Get in." He said and turned to climb into the rust encrusted vessel.

"Nice little boat you have here," I said, carefully climbing into the boat. It rocked beneath my weight, and I felt for the briefest of seconds like I would send the whole thing tumbling to one side. I sat down hard on the wooden bench, my breath catching in my throat.

"This'n is my 'pleasure craft'," Harvey replied, flipping a switch on the engine, which roared to life, immediately filling the air with the heavy smell of gasoline and oil. It made me wonder what his "business craft" was like.

Allenstown soon became a formless blob in the fog as we rounded the cape, the roar of the engine making it impossible to have a normal conversation. Not that Harvey was being very talkative. I'd yell a question to him and he'd just shrug or shake his head, so I gave up after only a few queries.

Twenty minutes passed and the fog was only growing thicker when the first signs of Blackfield came into view. I pulled my binoculars from my pack and gazed in its direction. A monolithic lighthouse stood proudly, but silent, on a craggy outcropping only accessible by a long rope bridge, which seemed to still be mostly intact. A winding, overgrown path lead down from the bridge into the port area, where a single, bleak grey stone building with a shoddy red tile roof sat, windows broken. Unlike the port in Allenstown, the Blackfield port was made up of concrete. A single loading dock stretched out into the waters. A two lane road lead away from the port, moving west and around a corner, my view from thereon blocked by a dense forest.

When we were a hundred yards from the island, Harvey shut down the main engine and lowered the trolling motor and flipped it on. It was much quieter than the engine, but the smell didn't change, blue smoke actually billowing up from it as the little blades whirled around noisily just below the surface of the water.

Harvey expertly turned the boat to the side and let it drift up to the port. The boat scraped against the concrete ramp and I waited for it to stop fully before stepping out. I turned to give Harvey the rest of his money and saw that he was holding something out for me instead. A gun, bright silver chrome shimmering even under the blanket of clouds that had enshrouded the sky.  
Growing up where I did, I was no stranger to firearms. But this was one I had never actually held before, an 8-inch Colt Python with a royal blue finish and, of all things, a scope. When I didn't move to take it right away, Harvey pushed it forward.

"Take this," he said, the brim of his hat drooping down just enough to obscure his eyes. "Dunno if it'll be of any use, but…well, just fucking take it. She's fully loaded and ready to go."  
I reached out with my free hand and gingerly gripped the handle, lifting it from the man's hand while carefully keeping the barrel pointed out and away from us. He took the cash from my other hand and secreted it away.

"I, uh, don't know what to say," I muttered, eyes glued on the gun.

"Don't need to say anything," Harvey sat down and flipped on the trolling motor. "I'll be back for ya in twelve hours, and I'll wait half an hour. If'n ya don't show up, I'm leavin' you here to fend for yourself. Ain't nobody should be here long after dark."

I checked the safety on the gun before securing it behind my back, in my belt. "I'll keep that in mind."

I stood on the pier until Harvey and his rusty boat were out of sight, the gun cold and heavy against my skin.

I had only just arrived on Blackfield and I was already wracked with indecision. Should I head right into town or go up to the lighthouse? As I mulled over the decision, I instinctively pulled out my phone. Only to find out I was getting no signal. A worrying sign. I hadn't expected anything too great, but even a weak signal would have been preferable. I thought then that the lighthouse might be a good solution, so my decision was made.

This lighthouse sat on what is known as Moody's Point, named after one of the original settlers who established a foothold on the island. It was here where a majority of the radio communication with the mainland took place, the last known operator of the lighthouse a man named Eustace Long. It was his voice that warned Allenstown of the sickness sweeping the island, the last voice from Blackfield at all.  
The wind had picked up a bit as I reached the end of the overgrown path and stood at the edge of the rope bridge, which was now bouncing and swaying with each gust. Despite its age, it looked intact. I looked over the edge of the cliff down to the jagged rocks below, where white foam whirled around in the churning sea.

I reached out and grabbed one of the wooden posts the bridge was tied to for support. Tentatively I put out a foot and tested the first wooden slat. It showed no give so I moved out and, gripping the frayed rope rails, slowly made my across, trying not to look down. The whole process took less than a minute but it felt like much longer, every muscle in my body tightening as I made the walk.

The lighthouse towered over me and as I approached I got the feeling that someone was watching me. I stopped at the front door, a pale yellow rectangle of wood that was barely hanging on to its hinges, and looked up. There were three windows up along the wall, each of them dark and covered from inside by boards. Shaking the feeling away, I pushed lightly on the front door, which swung open easily and very loudly.

Stale, warm air drifted into my nostrils, causing me to have to cover my mouth or become subject to a nasty sneezing fit. All around the floor lay broken pieces of furniture: chairs and benches, an upturned table, which looked to be handmade, with rusty tin utensils peeking out from under it. A recliner that looked like it had been taken to with a knife sat overturned against the wall, and on top of it was a book case that had been tipped over, any books that might have been in it gone without a trace. There was a carpet underneath all the rubble, so faded and stained that I couldn't tell what kind of pattern was embroidered upon it. To my left right inside the door was the winding staircase leading up, the brass railing still secured in its assigned spot but covered in rust and other dark, disturbing smudges. The word "blood" appeared in my mind but I quickly dismissed it.

My journey up the stairs was a slow one because the further up I went the more uneasy I felt. I couldn't put my finger on the cause, or even what really was wrong. It was a feeling in my gut that would not go away, like little creatures swimming around in my stomach. I tightened my grip on the railing, which was freezing cold in my palm, and forced myself to continue upwards.

The staircase eventually ended in a room that looked to have at one point been Eustace's bedroom. A bedframe filled with broken springs and no mattress lay against the opposite wall, and there was an ancient black iron stove with its black pipe leading into the wall. A rusty pan sat atop the stove, the rim of it rusted red. The center pillar in the room opened into a small area where there was an old, empty toilet, and across from this alcove was a large steel sink. I twisted one of the handles next to the spout but, of course, nothing came out.

The stairs leading to the top of the lighthouse were next to the bed so I headed in that direction. As I stepped onto the first concrete step, I saw something in the corner of my eye, under the bed, between the wall and the back left leg. I scurried back down and crouched to retrieve my prize, a leather bound journal. It almost fell apart in my hands, but I managed to keep it together long enough to get it to the counter that was connected to the sink. Butterflies in my stomach, I opened the little book and spread the pages out as neatly as possible, eyes scanning the faded cursive scribblings of Eustace Long with excitement.

I looked for the latest entries, and was overjoyed to find that he had entries for every day for the week leading up to the ominous final broadcast and warning. The first entry, dated June 15th, 1953, read, "Oliver's boy is sick again. Can't imagine what's wrong with him this time. Doc Conway is always at the Norville place, giving that boy a new syrup or pill to cram down his throat. Ms. Hemingway is also feeling ill, poor woman hasn't been right at all since her husband died back in '48. Ferry came in carrying supplies from the mainland, including a couple of radios and television sets. Dunno why anyone around here'd want one of those damned things, if folks wanted a TV they wouldn't be on Blackfield in the first place. I think Gerald ordered one with plans of fixing it into his bar at some point. A shame." Then a dry list of the temperature, wind speeds, and brief inventory of what goods the afternoon ferry brought in.

I pulled out my own journal of notes and quickly found out that Oliver referred to Oliver Norville, with his wife Opal, and their son Jonathan. Doc Conway was the local physician, Albert Conway, and Ms. Hemingway referred to Florence Hemingway, whose husband Robert had been Blackfield's chief of police from 1910 to his death in 1948, the cause reported to be a heart attack. Gerald was Gerald Hardline, owner of the eponymous Blackfield Cantina, the equivalent of the Flailing Lobster.

July 16th, "Went down to Gary's for a chunk of beef but the place was closed, called him and found out he's been sick since last night. Same with Betty Sue and Anne down at the office. Some nasty bug's going around, I reckon. Doc Conway is gonna have his hands full, wonder if he's gonna have to put in a request for penicillin or something. Got reports from Ranger Al from the outpost out in Pullman's, thought he saw a bear or something wandering around early this morning, but unless the thing got the guts to swim the mile from the mainland to here, I dunno what the hell he saw. He's a big boy with a big gun, he can handle it himself." More weather recordings and inventory of ferry contents. Also a crude drawing of a bear.

Gary, I figured, must have been Gary Billings, butcher. I would probably pass his shop somewhere out in the town. Betty Sue Ferry and Anne Brown were two of the secretaries that worked at the port office, and Ranger Al must have been Alexander Karloff, the state guy sent from Augusta to watch over Pullman's Forest, the woodlands that dominated Blackfield, named after one of the initial settlers. People were sure that the terrible fires that burned through Maine in 1947 would spread over to Blackfield as it almost happened to Allenstown, but it remained untouched. Ranger Al, I remembered, was also reported MIA, assumed a victim of the outbreak.

The 17th and 18th was just more of Eustace counting off the sick and complaining how he had to do all the work at the port, but it wasn't until the 19th that I could finally see, through his writing, that he was starting to worry something really bad was happening. It was the day Doc Conway himself finally caught whatever it was, leaving only his two nurses to run things, him having passed out that afternoon from high fever and vertigo.

I turned the page to the 20th and found a folded piece of yellowed paper that didn't fit in with the rest of the journal. I carefully unfolded it and immediately recognized it to be written in hand different from Eustace.

"We both know what's going on here, Eustace. Those terrible things our parents did to them sick folks. Coming back to bite us in the ass. You know it. I know it. And now I'm pretty sure the others are starting to catch on as well. Call Hicks over in Allenstown and stop the ferry. At least until we can get this figured out." The note wasn't signed.

I stared at the barely legible chicken scratch feeling extremely confused. I wracked my brain over every little tidbit I learned about Blackfield but couldn't even begin to put my finger on what the author of the note was talking about.

I flipped through the rest of the journal, noting that after the 21st Eustace's handwriting was getting sloppier and sloppier. The final entry was logged in at July 3rd.

It read: "We should have known something like this would happen, but now it's too late to do anything. I've got it now, just like everyone else. Grover and Eddie throwed themselves into the water off of Delta Point, little Ellie found their bodies while she was walking around the beach." Mysterious stains dotted the paper, smearing some of the words, "….and I keep seeing things moving out in the water around the point, not whales or fish but something shaped real unnatural like. Ranger Al disappeared three days ago after saying he was going to find where that bear was living and shoot it while it slept, wish I'd believed him about the animal earlier so I could go help him, can't hardly stand to leave the house now. Island is running out of food, but with most folk dead or gone we might be able to stretch it out for another month and a half. Pretty sure I'm not gonna see the end of this."

There were a few pages left in the journal after that, but they were blank. I have no idea how long I spent reading and re-reading those last few pages but I only stopped because my mouth had gone bone dry. I placed my backpack on the counter and unzipped it, taking a bottle of water out and cracking it open. It was still semi-cold thanks to the weather, and it made me feel better right away.

I turned the final page of the journal, the one just before the back of the leather cover, and found it had been written on. A single phrase scrawled in a different handwriting and with a much thicker pen.  
"THE CIRCLE IS COMPLETE" and below, on the bottom of the page, the writer had drawn an uneven, lumpy circle, as if their hand were shaking as they drew it.

The phrase meant nothing to me, yet for some reason a wave of uneasiness washed over me as I stared at the block letters and the simple drawing. I suddenly felt like I was watching myself while floating in the air, detached completely from my corporeal form, and yet somehow even though I knew it was my own body it somehow also wasn't. Then things shifted again, all at once, and nausea and dizziness almost caused me to fall over. I gripped the counter for support, dropping the journal to the floor and knocking over my bottle of water (thankfully I had screwed the cap back on).  
As my senses returned to normal, I picked up the leather journal and slipped it into one of the pockets of my backpack. I put the half empty water bottle in one of the mesh side pockets for easy access later. I swung it back over my shoulders and returned my gaze to the room.

Which was now covered in spider webs, with massive holes randomly spread across the wooden floor, which was now far more rotten than it had been only moments before. The sun had dimmed considerably and there was a mist clinging to the single circular window on the wall above the sink. Like some kind of smudged filter had been placed over it. It had not been like this before. It couldn't have been. I fumbled for the mini Maglite I kept in my front pocket and switched it on with trembling hands.

The bright white beam pierced the dimness with grim efficiency, shining right across the room into the little alcove bathroom. Inside the bathroom the light revealed, straddling the toilet, a twisted human-like figure whose mouth was frozen open in silent terror, its skin was shriveled, blackened and fit too tightly to its malformed skeleton. Chunks of thin, wispy hair clung to its scalp; its eye sockets were black holes of two different sizes. It twitched and I screamed and closed my eyes, also dropping the flashlight, sending its beam flailing wildly all over the entire room. The flashlight clattered loudly on the floor, its light flickering out.

Utter stillness lay over the room like a fog and I slowly opened my eyes to find that the figure in the bathroom was gone but the room was still unnaturally dark and rotten. I knelt slowly to pick up the Maglite, my eyes darting around the room, looking for any sign of the twisted thing. But it was gone.

My trembling slowly subsided and I took a few deep breaths to try and calm myself further. There was still one more floor to go but I was debating going back down and leaving the lighthouse forever. Two voices warred in my subconscious, one arguing that it would be safer to just leave while the other urged that further investigation was needed so that the truth could be found.

I swung the light over to the stairs leading up, noting that they were crisscrossed with cobwebs all the way up to where the disappeared into the ceiling. I can't explain where the burst of courage came from, but I was heading towards the staircase before I knew what was really happening. Using the flashlight to clear the webs, I slowly made my way up.

The going was slow, the webbing so thick in some places I had to use my hands to rip them apart before I could continue. The air also grew progressively colder the farther up I went, my heavy coat doing very little for me as I reached the top.

The massive windows of the lighthouse were severely cracked, something I hadn't noticed from the boat on my approach or even from looking up at it right from below. It was amazing to me that the windows had remained intact at all in this state. The massive light in the middle, the one which would guide ships to port, was in an equal state of disrepair. There was no bulb, and the spot where one would be had somehow become overgrown with dry, grey roots that sprouted from the socket where the bulb would normally be set.

But strangest of all was the view the top of the lighthouse afforded me. All around the fog had thickened to the point where I could barely see out over the water, much less the mainland. The clouds overhead blocked the sun almost completely, making it almost as dark as night. Trees dotting the shore, sticking up like swords among the rocks, whipped back and forth under a silent, but strong, wind. They had lost their colors.

I walked to the other side, looking over the forest and towards the town of Blackfield itself. The buildings were all a sad shade of grey and many had massive holes in their roofs. It had begun to drizzle, water droplets building up on the cracked glass making it difficult to see much more.

I pulled out my phone to check the time (noting I still had no signal even up here) and it read 8:15. I had been on the island for almost forty-five minutes. It felt like both more and less than that. Harvey said he would be back in twelve hours. 7 pm. At this point I couldn't fathom remaining on Blackfield for that long, much less having another twenty days to spend doing research.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

I exited the lighthouse expecting to be buffeted by high winds and drenched by heavy rains but in the five minutes it took me to descend and open the door things had died down considerably. There was still a bit of a drizzle but the wind was calm. The world was still wrapped in the strange greyness. I approached the rope bridge with more caution than before, noting that if I had missed so obvious points of rot in the floor of the lighthouse I might have missed something terribly wrong here as well. I gripped the frayed railings and slowly extended my foot to test the first board, it creaked but did not give. I repeated this process with each step, holding onto the sides for dear life, just in case. I was concentrating so hard while looking down at my feet, I didn't see the thing appear at the other end until I was almost upon it.

The figure was over six feet tall, and encased in a dark black shadow that roiled around it like smoke, but there was nothing around that could have cast a shadow over it. Its eyes were two glowing red points in the head, and they were staring right at me. I wanted to scream, to turn and run back into the lighthouse, but I couldn't move. I was frozen, entranced by this creature. Slowly it raised its right arm and from its hand extended a three foot long object that curved at the top like a blade. Down came the shadow blade…right onto one of the support ropes that held the bridge up.

Finally finding my voice, I screamed and hunched down, covering my head with my hands, fully expecting to plunge to my death in the churning waters below. But nothing happened. So I opened my eyes and found that the shadowy figure was gone.

Cautiously I finished crossing the bridge. The very second my feet were off there was a loud snap and I whirled around to see the rope bridge collapse. As I processed the sight, another sound sent me sprawling onto my ass. A muffled explosion came from the top of the lighthouse, sending shards of glass raining down all around. I turned onto my stomach and shielded the back of my head with my hands.

I waited. But nothing happened.

The shadowy person nowhere to be found, so I made my way back down the overgrown path to the port authority headquarters, where Betty Sue and Anne had once worked. I stepped out onto the road from the dirt path and saw that the road all the way up and around the corner was covered in the same grey roots I had seen at the top of the lighthouse. They came from both the forest and over the cliff from the ocean. The roots made a circle around the building I was looking to go into but there seemed to be an invisible line they would not cross that left four feet between them and the building itself.  
The two garages were shut, but the front was wide open, the door that once stood there long gone. I stepped over the roots, each about as thick as my arm and numbering in the dozens, and shone my flashlight into the darkness. Again I was met by ruin, only this time there was more detritus to sift through. Old beer cans and glass bottles littered the floor, as did a yellowed, torn up mattress that had some faded dirty magazines piled on it. Remnants of the teens that went missing, perhaps? A receptionist desk sat ten feet in front of the entrance and on it was the remnants of an old rotary phone, the receiver long torn away, leaving the cradle sitting alone, and empty. Its drawers were missing as well, leaving four holes behind, each filled with dust and webs. I had seen a lot of webs, but yet to see a spider. This had me very worried.

I left the front desk and reception area behind and maneuvered my way through a thin wooden door which opened up into an office that looked worse off than the reception area. There were two desks facing each other in the middle of the room, both looking to have been actively destroyed. The desk to my left had been hit with a sharp object repeatedly, probably a machete or fireman's axe. It was almost in two pieces, another swing or two of the blade would finish the job.

The other desk was mostly intact, though completely bare. Upon a closer inspection, and having wiped away several layers of dust, I saw that initials had been carved along the desktop. Five pairs. Ten kids missing. They had been here, had their graduation party here.

Along the wall was a long table covered in a big white sheet. Shining the light on it, I began to make my way toward it. I reached out to touch it but then something underneath the sheet moved, causing me to jerk my hand back. I put the light where the "something" had moved and waited, but nothing else happened. I reached out again, my fingers hesitating just as they brushed the coarse cloth. With a deep breath I lifted the sheet and peered at the thing beneath.

The gutted, rusted remains of several different kinds of radios lay spread across the long table. I threw back the sheet to reveal as much as I could. Here were Eustace Long's communication devices. The idea that a disease had spread through Blackfield kept me from actually touching the machinery, which showed no signs of having been vandalized like the desks. The kids had some sense, I guessed.  
My light revealed one last door to go through. It squealed loudly as I pushed it open, the sound echoing in the massive garage that unfolded before me. This was where the deliveries were put when the workers unloaded the ferry. The giant, dark room was unsettling when it was completely empty. The center was a lowered area that one would have to walk down at least a dozen stairs to get to. To my left was a massive, closed metal door that probably lead to some back road that delivery trucks could drive up to and receive their goods. To my right was the open dock where the ferry could back into for unloading. Water splashed and rolled up the concrete where I saw decades of barnacles and trash had built up. In the back corner next to that open dock there was a squared off area with walls that didn't go all the way to the ceiling and a big glass window that wrapped around it. The head office, I reckoned.

I walked along the edge of the big ramp that dominated the center of the room, stepping over fallen metal shelves, uncoiled red hoses and broken wooden boxes-looking into them as I passed for anything interesting, to no avail.

The office was untouched by the teenage vandals as far as I could tell. The desk was still neatly organized, a calendar in one corner and an old and rusted electric fan in another. In the center was a scattered pile of papers. Most of them were faded invoices and order forms, but on the bottom I found a log. Each entry had been initialed with E.L.

I had come in not expecting much, but like the journal in the lighthouse I was surprised with information that made no sense to me. The final entry in the log, which documented each time the ferry came and went, and the cargo it was carrying-both in material goods and people, was for July 3rd, the same as the last entry in Eustace's journal. According to reports, no ferries or radio contact with Blackfield happened between June 21st and July 18th. Were the reports wrong? I thought back to the way Harvey, Blake, and Len reacted to my inquiries. Could the Allenstown locals have lied to the FBI and CDC about what was going on?

A tall metal filing cabinet stood in the corner so I moved to that. There were four drawers, the first three were locked and I pulled so hard on the fourth I almost yanked it out completely. It was filled to the point of bursting with manila folders that had been packed with paper. The folders were in decent shape, but whatever stickers or writing they had been labeled with were long gone. A quick scan quickly revealed that most of the documents were useless, accounting nonsense, but once I neared the back I noticed one folder above all the rest. It bulged unnaturally and something inside shifted as I pulled it out of the drawer.

Inside was a brooch that took the shape of a starfish, studded with rounded, smooth turquoise stones. It was five inches in diameter and held twenty-six stones within it-one big one in the middle with smaller stones branching out along the limbs. It was the only thing in the folder. No slip to explain why it was there.

A sound outside the office caused me to turn my attention out the window. It came from the garage door in the back. It sounded like something heavy was banging against it. I watched it with bated breath…but nothing happened. When I looked back down at the trinket in my hand I found that it had become slimy and cold, and was writhing in my palm. The turquoise gems had taken on a moist quality, and looked soft and squishy. Then it made a high pitched squeal, like a pig, only several octaves higher. I yelped and dropped it. It landed with a soft click and went still. I stared at it, and then at my palm, and then back at it in utter disbelief. I pulled a pen from my pocket and poked at the brooch, but it didn't yield at all, the soft quality gone.

I was quarreling with myself again, this time over whether or not I should pocket the item for part of my research project. As the debate raged on in my mind, on the very edge of my hearing there was a wet squelching and slithering sound. I ignored it at first, thinking I was only imagining things but when I decided to take the brooch it grew louder. I gripped the now ordinary piece of jewelry in my hand, standing and flashing the beam of from my light across the wall.

Black algae coated the walls of the office, something I was sure wasn't there only moments before. It was spreading as I stared at it, dumbfounded. I bolted from the office as it slithered across the floor and began moving towards me. I made for the door to the office but quickly screeched to a halt when I saw some of the algae branching out from the door I had left open. When I got close enough to see inside the door I was greeted by an enormous, pulsating mass of the algae that filled the entire radio room. Something moved within the lump and I could hear whatever it was moaning and scratching inside, pushing its limbs against the inside of the mass, making lumps appear and disappear all around it. It wanted out, it wanted at me. I thought it was my heart beating terrifyingly loud in my ears, but it was not. The quivering form itself was emitting the rhythmic thumping.

My mind was scrambling to comprehend exactly what it was I was looking at, so much so that I forgot about the edge and soon found myself tumbling backwards down into the pit, where cold sea water washed up against my now screaming shoulder. It was amazing luck that I didn't break anything in that fall. Even though it was only a four foot drop, if I hadn't landed on my elbows first things could have been much worse.

Ignoring the pain in my now-damp left shoulder, I stood and limped towards the closed garage door, flashing my light around, looking for some kind of mechanism that might raise it. Behind me, I could hear the black algae slithering across the concrete, growing steadily louder and louder.

To the left of the door I found a closed grey box, unfortunately the little door was locked in place with an old padlock. I looked back to see the algae from the office and the door had come together as one and was slithering over the lip where I fell and coming up the ramp towards me, branching out like veins, reaching towards me.

I bashed the Maglite against the old padlock and it shook and clanked but didn't move. I did it again, and nothing. I could hear the strange beating again. Panic threatened to overtake me, I could barely think straight. My flight instinct was strong. But I kept hammering at the lock, praying to any god that would listen to me. And then the lock broke and the door swung open, revealing a series of buttons and switches and multicolored wires. Now I just needed there to be electricity.

There were no labels on anything inside the box, and there were certainly more buttons and switches than I could have fathomed were necessary. But now wasn't the time for me to be picky. I swallowed hard and pressed the first row of buttons. The long, tube lights on the ceiling began to flash on and off, brightening the room with white light one moment and pitching it back into near blackness the next.

I pressed the second row, when I got to the next to last one the garage squealed and something overhead went thunk and emitted a loud grinding sound. The garage door heaved, shrugging off decades of inactivity, and slowly began to rise, letting in the dull grey light of the day. My heart jumped back into my chest, happiness and relief flooded me in a way that it never had before. Until I realized how slow it was rising.

I ran to the middle of the garage door and slipped my fingers underneath the lip of the door and began to pull upwards, with no idea whether it would actually help or not. I pulled with all my might in an effort to hurry it along, my eyes constantly daring back to the approaching algae.

The next thing I did was the only think I could think of. I reached around and pulled the gun Harvey had given me from my waist and aimed it at the algae, haphazardly shoving my flashlight into my pocket.

I've stated before that I'm no stranger to firearms, but I admit I was completely unfamiliar with this particular make and model. I'd seen it in video games, but of course those don't compare to the real thing in the slightest sense. I steadied myself, flipped the safety off, and looked down the scope, even though I really didn't need to, the plant-like mass had spread almost the entire width of the garage at this point, and squeezed the trigger. Always squeeze, never pull.

The gun jumped violently in my hands and I involuntarily clenched my eyes shut because of the muzzle flash. I felt myself jerk backward against the aluminum door.

I don't know what I was expecting to happen, but it was certainly not what I got. The algae screamed after I shot it, convulsed and spouted a black ichor from the hole I made in it. The screaming sounded like a thousand voices at once, wailing in agony and anger. Things within the algae thrashed just beneath its surface, never quite breaking through. And it halted its advance.

I felt a cool air blow against the backs of my legs and I looked down to see it had come up enough for me to crawl through. I flipped the gun's safety switch back on and shoved it back in my waistband.  
The algae-beast continued to rave and scream and thrash as I dropped to my knees and skittered under the door. I was on my feet in an instant and tearing ass down the overgrown backroad that lead into the forest. When the screams of the creature finally began to fade, I slowed and cast a glance over my shoulder. Whatever it was, it had stopped just at the border between the garage and the road, not leaving the building. The garage door was fully open by then, and the algae-thing had completely filled it, and I imagine that meant the entire building was now a part of it as well. There would be no going back in there for me.

I veered off the road, panting and gasping for breath while my heart banged in my chest. Leaning heavily against a tree that felt cold and slimy beneath my palm, I finished the previously opened bottle of water and just dropped it to the ground. It bounced and rolled into the dirt and onto a pile of wet leaves.

I stumbled back onto the road, my heart calm and my lungs full, but my leg muscles burned and my shoulder was still throbbing from my fall. The road went uphill at a bit of an incline that normally wouldn't have been an issue, but at this moment I just wanted to fall over and sleep. Instinct told me to resist the urge, so I did, albeit reluctantly.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

I walked along the twisted road for almost an hour, never stopping to rest in spite of my body's protests. What finally made me stop was coming to a fork in the road, one splitting off to the northeast and the other to the southeast. A single blue sign stood at the crux, two bright yellow arrows pointed in either direction, labeled with where they lead. To my left was the road into town, and the right would lead me to the ranger station. Both were places I eventually wanted to visit. But I argued, with myself, that once I got into town it might be a pain in the ass to track my way back to the ranger station. So to the northeast I went!

I had been walking for ten minutes when suddenly I felt a hard pain in my head. It felt as if someone had jabbed sharp pins into my temples. It was so bad that I fell to my knees, the pain of my kneecaps on the hard road lost to the pain in my head. Nausea made my breakfast and all the water I drank threaten to make a return trip up my throat. And then the pain was just gone, all of it, taking the nausea along.

I opened my eyes and saw that the grey shroud that had been set over everything since the lighthouse was gone. The colors, what color there was for Maine in mid-December, had returned in full force. The strange roots were gone and the clouds had dispersed to allow the sun a bit of freedom.

I took a deep breath, tasting the cool, crisp air that no longer felt like it was clouding up my lungs. It was good. But it didn't erase my memory of what I experienced in the lighthouse and port office. I looked over my shoulder and debated going back, but something inside of me told me not to. Insisted, really.

The road was in a severe state of disrepair, filled with cracks and potholes. The yellow center line long faded, the edges washed away by decades of storms and snows.

I topped a hill and saw sitting at the bottom, in a deep ditch, the rusted remains of a delivery truck with the back door completely open. The painted symbol on the side was long faded, but the bigger red letters were still readable. "Fisher's Grocery." I walked up to it, feeling a sense of awe as I reached out and brushed my fingers against the side. For sixty years this truck sat in its final resting place, probably returning home from a pickup. I peeked around into the back, finding it filled with broken crates, whatever they were carrying long gone.

I was about to continue on my merry way when I saw something strange in the corner of my eye. Turning, I leaned in and saw that there were claw marks in the metal of the inside of the storage trailer, right along the edge where the door would normally be pulled down. Using my Maglite, I scanned the rest of the interior only to find that there were even more marks. They happened in clusters of three and some went as deep as two inches into the interior. I backed away from the truck, overwhelmed with a sense of foreboding. I scurried back out onto the road and, after casting a quick glance back to the truck, continued on to the ranger's station.

The station looked normal on the outside. It was a large, two story wooden structure with a sharply slanted roof painted a deep forest green. It sat propped up by thick pillars on the side of a rather steep hill, overlooking the dense forest. The roof was littered with dead leaves, which stuffed the gutters around the edge far, far over capacity. There was a veranda that jutted out from the building and stretched all around it. Like many other things on the island, it had fallen into heavy disrepair and was terribly stained and rotted in many places. One of the six stairs leading up to the veranda was completely missing, the one on the very bottom. It wasn't too big a stretch, but I used the railing to help lift myself over it. The wood creaked ominously under my weight as I made my way to the entrance, a pair of double doors with the glass long blown out, by what I couldn't imagine, but there was no sign of the broken glass anywhere.

I touched the handles to the double doored entrance, the rusted steel feeling ice cold against my skin. With a little pull they came open, but something stopped them before I could get them all the way out. I jerked on them and heard a hard rattling noise from above. Looking up, nothing really appeared wrong with the hinges. It didn't matter, I could still fit through the opening if I took my backpack off and carried it in my hand.

The doors clacked shut behind me as I treaded deeper into the station. I found myself standing in some kind of lobby, with a circular desk in center. All along it were empty metal brochure racks and plastic mats. An overturned swivel chair was hidden from immediate sight, snapped in half where the wheels and the chair itself met.

All along the walls were remnants of posters long torn away, and even a few empty hooks and mounts that might have been used to hang hunting trophies. There was even a display case, empty of course, but a tarnishes bronze plaque—after a bit of a shine-said that this was supposed to be the skull of the biggest black bear ever found on Blackfield Island. A shame, I thought, I would have liked to see it.  
An "employee's only" sign hung loosely on a door so, naturally, I went through it. It lead to a break room, with a broken down refrigerator, a couple of couches and chairs surrounding a card table, and a series of cabinets that had been left standing open.

A scattered number of cards around a pile of matchsticks told me that at least three people were sitting in here when…something happened, and they hadn't gotten a chance to come back to their game. Near the cabinets were the remains of a shattered mug, whatever it had been holding long dried.

In the back of the room was another door but when I tried the knob it didn't move. Locked. I took a step back, wondering what could possibly be behind it.

The air in this windowless, little fifteen by fifteen room felt oppressive, heavy. Thinking back to my experience in the lighthouse, I felt the urge to flee. I was surprised to look down and find my hands were shaking, I hadn't even felt it and no matter how hard I concentrated I couldn't get them to stop.

Something brushed up against the back of my neck and a scream escaped my lips. I whirled around to find nothing, then as I stood panting it happened again. I froze up, this time only slowly turning my head. Standing behind me was the dim outline of a tall man wearing a stereotypical park ranger hat. His face was featureless but I could feel his eyes on me. My neck was locked in place, I couldn't turn away from him as he reached up and pointed to the locked door.

I tried to look where he pointed, only managing to move my eyes. I strained to look at the door. "L—L-L," I stuttered. Locked! It's locked! I screamed in my mind.

The smoky man stepped forward through me and my head felt like someone had hit it with a sledgehammer. I fell to my knees as tears blurred my vision. I curled up on the floor, weeping freely as my head pulsated with sharp pain. This went on for a full minute and then was gone as quickly as it came. There was a soft click followed by a loud squeal and I slowly opened my eyes to see that the locked door was now open.

I stood and wiped my eyes, revealing that the grey haze had once again fallen over everything. And the man was gone. I scanned the room and saw that the weird roots were growing out of the cabinets, winding around and over each other like wires. Particularly heavy looking, thick ones were coming out of the fridge. Cobwebs covered the card table, extending out across the chair and couches. There was something very different about the cards as well.

Moments before the cards had looked normal, black and red and normal. But now they were terrifying. Each face up card held a different, very graphic scene of violence and torture. Mutilated bodies strewn about in pieces, rooms filled with gore and guts, bodies hung from ceilings with barbed wire. They were all just drawings, or perhaps pictures of paintings, but they were so realistic it made me sick.

I turned away from the table and saw the smoke man standing in the doorway. Only now he was more there, more corporeal. He looked at me with sad eyes, his mouth a small line on his face. He nodded once and motioned for me to follow with a hand. But I didn't move, struck by the realization that I knew him. I fell to my knees and began digging through my backpack as the smoke man watched me curiously. I pulled out a thick picture album and flipped through it rapidly until I came across what I wanted.

I held the book up and pointed to the sepia toned picture of Alexander Karloff standing in front of the, then well-maintained, ranger station. He was holding a rifle in one arm and his hat in the other, smiling proudly. His hair was dark and cut short, his eyebrows thick and angled in such a way to give him a permanent look of amusement. Ranger Al had come into the Maine Forestry Service after serving in Europe during WWII. Reports held him as a kind, generous man who loved to take long walks in the woods by himself, or with groups of tourists who would eat up every word he told them.  
The smoky man's eyes close and he smiled, it matched the man in the picture. Ranger Al motioned for me to follow again, his lips moving silently. I stood and heard a whisper in my ear, "…come…" I swallowed hard and nodded, turning on my flashlight.

Ranger Al had no trouble moving through the darkness, not that I should have been surprised. By light went right through him as we walked through the private area that had once been where he lived. His living space was basically one small room, it had a kitchen and dining area, a couch in front of a broken down TV, I was surprised that they could get anything out on the island. Ranger Al entered a backroom that wasn't much bigger than a broom closet that had served as his office, there was a desk against a large window that overlooked the forest. He hovered by the desk, looking between it and me until I walked over. He moved to the side and I saw that there was an old logbook there, open on the very last page.

Written in neat script was the following: "The bear keeps coming around and trying to get into the station. I can see its claw marks all around the front doors and even some of the windows. Why? It's one thing if a person leaves out their garbage, which I have repeatedly told the townsfolk never to do, but it's almost as if this thing has a reason for wanting to get in. Tonight I am going to go hunting for the animal, there are some caves up north that run along the creek that I'll check. This thing has to be taken care of before it goes into the town proper and wreaks havoc. With all the sick folk only getting worse, it would be a disaster scenario to add a curious, possibly rabid, bear on top of it."

After I finished the entry I looked up and saw that Al had disappeared. I leaned over the desk and gazed out the window, where far below I saw the glimmering of water. The creek.  
I stopped myself there, wondering why I would even go looking for Al's possibly final resting place. It wasn't what I came to the island for, and quite frankly after all the weird shit I had to admit that I was far less inclined to want to stay.

But there was still a voice deep inside me that urged me on, to find the truth. It had always been there, ever since I was a child, in some form or another. I could never leave "well enough alone" as my father once put it. Why was the sky blue? Are ghosts real? How does electricity work? And, much to my mother's chagrin, "is there really a god?"

However, this was a situation I had never been put in before, my experiences in Blackfield up to this point had defied every logical boundary I'd erected. My curiosity proved to be stronger than my cowardice.

There was a locked screen door back in the main room, next to the fridge and oven. It creaked loudly as I opened it and something in the trees fluttered away. A winding staircase lead down from the deck a hundred feet to the ground, which was covered in dead leaves and fallen branches that crunched under my feet as I made my way to the creek.

The water was surprising clear and cool, though I could see further down that some of the strange roots cut through it so I decided against tasting it. I stood and checked my phone for the time. It was almost noon, lunchtime (also still no signal, not that I was really expecting it). I didn't feel very hungry but I knew that it was a better idea to eat a little something anyway. I scarfed down two chocolate and peanut butter protein bars and downed half of my second bottle of water.

I followed the flow of the creek, moving over fallen trees and through narrow passages between boulders, the terrain becoming more difficult the further along I got. Twenty minutes of pushing through thick, prickly brush lead me to a clearing that looked like it had been carved out of the rock by lasers. It was perfectly cylindrical in shape and went up almost a hundred feet. Large, perfectly symmetrical arches dotted the stone all around and I realized where I was. These were the Singing Caverns of Blackfield Island. A natural phenomenon that would cause a loud whistling noise when the wind was just right, usually in the spring and fall.

This is where Ranger Al was convinced the bear was living. Not that it would be impossible, but this place had so much foot traffic it was hard to imagine a bear being able to settle here comfortably.  
I was so focused on the holes that when I stepped into the center, something cracked loudly under my foot and I almost had a heart attack. I stumbled back, arms flailing to keep my balance and I saw that I had stepped on a damaged hat. A ranger's hat, faded by the decades of weather. With a shaky hand I bent down to pick it up and found what I feared, a crushed skull. It was missing its lower jaw and one eye socket was almost completely caved in. I stood on the resting place of Ranger Al.

That hat fell from my hands and floated back to the ground, landing atop the skull. "Sorry, buddy," I murmured. I drew the Colt and held it in both hands, not doing a very good job of steadying my hands.  
Somewhere, from within these caves, someone was watching me. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up and my arms were covered in gooseflesh. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, but I could feel a presence in the air.

A gust of wind swept through the clearing and I heard the song that gave the area its name. A low pitched howling sound came from the caves, a deep ringing that I could feel deep down in my chest. It left an uneasy feeling in my gut, a heavy stone in my stomach. Did people really find this pleasant? It was a dirge. It left me feeling hollow and alone.

Something moved in the corner of my eye and I whirled around and out from the cavern right in front of me emerged one of the most horrendous, terrifying thing I had ever seen in my life. Ranger Al's "bear." It was large like a bear, even shaped like one-lurching towards me on all four twisted, human-flesh colored legs. The creature was furless, and covered in boils and open sores that bled and leaked puss freely. Its paws were like human feet, with sharp black talons emerging from the fingers, and its face...its face was the worst of all. It was some kind of human-bear hybrid-the top half of its head was human, but it had the jaws of a bear. The eyes, which had locked onto me, were wide and bright blue and gave me the sense that the creature was in a great amount of pain. It opened its maw and let loose a cry that chilled my blood. A mixture of a bear's pained mewling and a screaming baby. And the stench. The stench was of shit and rotting corpses that had spent too long baking in the summer sun.

I lost it, my stomach cramping and forcing its contents back up. I nearly dropped the gun as I doubled over and sprayed the watery vomit all over the ground. I could taste sour protein bars coming back over my tongue.

The bear-thing reared back on its hind legs as I recovered, exposing its pale underbelly which was filled with lacerations and more sores. Internal organs were exposed, but not any that could be recognized. A heart is a heart, lungs are lungs, but I saw neither of those things in the loose jumble of palpitating multi-colored innards that seemed on the verge of falling out of the monster at any second.

With a shout I scrambled away, the bear-thing slamming onto the ground where I had just stood a second later. I felt the earth tremble beneath my feet, shockwaves from the attack. I turned and fired the gun and watched as a large chunk of the monster's shoulder exploded in a red mist. It roared again, a mournful sound that echoed savagely off the stone walls of the clearing. A parody of the song of the caves.

I steadied my feet and took a breath as I looked down the scope. The bear was looking back at me with baleful eyes as it lurched forward in my direction. New boils and seeping sores were forming on it as it moved, its pale flesh rippling like it had things trying to burst through. It made a horrible retching sound and a string of indeterminable, alien organs came spewing out, bouncing and wiggling on a single organic tube that connected them all together. I squeezed the trigger and the bear-thing's face exploded in a shower of gore and bone.

Silently it fell to the ground and lay still, its pustules still working their disgusting transfigurations. But as I watched, those eventually stopped too. The skin began to slough off as it turned to liquid, revealing a pearly white, malformed skeleton of too-many and wrongly angular bones. The liquid flesh disappeared into the grey soil, leaving no trace. The organs were next, going as the flesh, disappearing in a slow and agonizing manner as I looked on with unimaginable horror and nausea.

Behind the skeleton a pocket of air began to shimmer and I saw the expanding, translucent form of Ranger Al appear. His eyes were downcast and his mouth a slight arc as he looked down at the remains. When he looked up at me I felt a shock of electricity shoot through my veins. He cracked a smile and raised his hat to me. The he faded.

An inexplicable feeling of emptiness washed over me as I stood there in the still greyness of the Singing Caverns. Then the pain began, from the center of my brain, flowering out through my brain. It was intense, my vision blurred and I lost my balance, falling to my knees, hard. I screamed as my heart beat loudly in my ears and tears in my eyes made the world disappear in a haze. The world slipped away, encasing me in a blanket of darkness.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

I awoke with great pains in my lower back and my head. My eyes fluttered open and I was welcomed back to life not by the greyness of the Singing Caves but the comforting warmth of a soft bed and heavy blankets. I shot up, not recognizing where I was. A small room almost too small for the bed. The only other piece of furniture was a night table next to the bed but it was empty and covered in dust. I threw the blankets back and found that I was still fully clothed.

I slipped out of the bed, silently moving to the door, my ears straining to hear anything. But there was nothing. Total silence. I gripped the cold doorknob and slowly pushed the door open. Bright light blinded me, sending me staggering forward until my knee hit something hard and sharp. I cried out and my vision cleared. I was standing in the ranger's station. In the break room. On one of the worn down couches was my backpack, and sitting among the scattered playing cards (which now looked normal) was my phone. The screen had a nasty crack but it was still functional. 1:00 P.M., it said.

I pocketed my phone and picked up my backpack. "Hello?" I called out, hitching the pack over my shoulders. "Hello? Is someone there?" No answer.

I walked over to the sink and looked out the window that was over it. The grey haze that had settled over everything was gone again, and the clouds had broken apart, finally letting the sun shine through. The forest below looked different in the sunlight, almost normal. My mind was beginning to wander when I suddenly remembered the gun. I patted myself all around my waist only to find it was gone.  
"Shit," I whispered.

I was back at the couch and chairs, throwing the cushions around and pushing the furniture over. But the Colt was nowhere to be found. My heart sank as I thought of the bear-thing and the algae, certain I would meet more horrible things in my time on Blackfield. Only now without any sort of protection.

But, my train of thought continued, there might be something in the town I could use. Certain the residents would have had their own hunting rifles. All of this hinging on looters never gracing Blackfield. More connections in my brain as it fired on all cylinders: the reputation of Blackfield Island might scare away any looters. But that didn't stop me from coming.

"Shit!" I shouted, running my hands through my hair.

I had to get to town. I rushed leave the break room and stopped in my tracks when I saw the dirty ranger's hat hanging from the doorknob. I sighed, laughing a bit at the same time.

"Thanks, buddy." I said, picking up the hat. Despite being worn around the edges and smeared with mud it was in a decent condition. I tied the string from the hat in the loop at the top of my backpack.  
I made my way through the tourist area of the station and stepped outside into the fresh air, surprised that the temperature was tolerable. Dead leaves danced across the empty parking lot, my footfalls the only real sound in the air. I stepped onto the road, making my way back the way I came to the fork in the road.

Half an hour later I was on the path to the town, my mind racing over the kinds of horrible things I might encounter there. Harvey's return was still far away, if he was even planning on coming back in the first place.

The road to town was much smoother and more straightforward than the ranger station one. I came across a cluster of wrecked cars spread across the road haphazardly. They were all empty, of course, but one small silver car in particular caught my attention. Its windows were smashed in, covering all but the driver's seat with jagged glass. Someone had been sitting there, I figured, when the windows were broken. I reached through the window and unlocked the door, pulling it open with a loud, rusty squeal that made my eyes twitch. A dark stain marked the foot pedals and a little plastic mat that was there as well.

I stood and felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing. So very slowly I turned, my lungs constricting tightly in my chest.

I saw it out of the corner of my eye first, a red-eyed dark figure similar to the one I'd seen back at the lighthouse, at the end of the bridge. It wasn't much taller than I and one of its arms was missing. 

When I was looking at it head on, the figure suddenly did a ninety degree turn to the left and sat down, not on the ground but in mid-air. Its formless hands suddenly grew distinct fingers which wrapped around something invisible. It was holding a wheel. I understood then what I was seeing. I watched as the dark figure jerked the invisible steering wheel back and forth before jerking forward and slamming its head against it. It looked up and to the left, in my direction and over my head. It raised its hands in fear, covering its head, but whatever it was looking at grabbed it by the throat and lifted it up and out. It flew towards me and I screamed and covered my face. Then it was gone.

I began to cough, unable to stop myself, doubling over with my hands on my knees. Something sticky was caught in my throat and I began to cough harder, until little blue dots began to swim in my eyes. The gunk finally loosened when I felt like my face was on fire, and I felt it shoot out of my mouth—it was cold and thick. I gasped for air as my vision cleared, the world swimming, almost causing me to fall over. When things had settled down I looked down and saw what I had spit up.

A thick, quivering blob, inky black, was quivering like gelatin between my feet. One part of me wanted to reach down and touch it, the other…did not. Really did not want me to. In fact, it overrode everything else and sent me running in a panic away from the smashed car.

I didn't stop running until the muscles in my legs felt like they were going to collapse. By that time, the mass of wrecked cars was out of sight and the first signs of the town were beginning to appear. I plopped down on the curb to catch my breath, looking all around as I did.

To my right, down a twisting gravel path thirty yards away from the road, was a beige house with black roof. The paint stripped almost entirely away and many, many tiles missing from the roof. Connected to it was a closed garage, colored the same way as the house. None of the windows on the house, or garage, were broken, which came as a surprise to me.

Across the road was a similar building, this one two stories with a grand front porch littered with broken furniture. The windows were smashed and the front door had been broken in half horizontally. Why had that house suffered such damage while the other had not?

I stood up, my joints moaning. I walked across the street and nearly fell over a fallen mailbox in the tall grass. Kneeling to pick it up, I saw that a name had been painted on the side and it was still barely visible.

"Lewiston," it said, and I instantly began to search my memory for the name. Having trouble, I pulled a list from my pack that I had printed out of Blackfield's known residents and began to scan it. To my relief, the grad student I had assigned to the task had listed them in alphabetical order. There were four entries under the surname Lewiston: Clarence, Rosalyn, Maxwell and Carla. Maxwell was ruled out, as he had died in 1948 at the ripe age of seventy-five. Clarence and Rosalyn were married, and their daughter was Carla. This must have been their home. Looking at the dates, I saw that Carla had only been seven years old when the plague hit Blackfield.

I stood and looked back at the other house, but saw no sign of there ever having been a mailbox. But, then, I saw there was a small slot near the bottom of the front door. I saw three numbers painted onto the curb "357." There were addresses in my records as well, but far too many to search through without knowing more about the people who lived there. The Lewiston address was 358, so that would help in a later search.

I walked up the fragmented concrete sidewalk to the Lewiston house and stopped at the base of the stairs that lead up to the porch. There was a sadness radiating from the house, I felt it in my heart. The first step creaked under my weight, as did the second and third and fourth. I looked around the porch at all the broken furniture. A great violence had happened here, I knew, and it hadn't stopped on the porch.

Even though half of it was gone, the part with the knob was still attached to the frame so I had to reach over the jagged wood and unlock it before I could the door open. Right away I was greeted by the sight of shredded wallpaper and shattered furniture in a wide, open living room. The walls looked as if someone had taken an axe to them, while a fallen bookcase had been toppled and smashed into five pieces.

Weaving through the debris, I stopped in the center of the room and saw a dark stain leading from the center through an open door that lead to a tiled floor. The kitchen. I followed it and found the kitchen had been the center of some kind of fight. There were small bullet holes in the cabinets and the old fridge, and another stain on the steel sink. The center of the room looked like something heavy had been dropped in the middle of it, the floor caved in and all the tiles shifted slightly inwards towards it.

Another blood trail, leading to an open door and down into a dark basement. Click went my flashlight as I turned it on and threw the beam downward. Most of the stairs were intact, but the last four had been shattered. I began my descent slowly, keeping the light focused on the bottom, gripping the railing, white knuckled. I stopped at the first broken stair and leaned down to get a look under the ceiling.

The basement was in complete disarray, tall shelves lay broken all around, mixed with shattered glass and wooden barrels. The dark line disappeared into the darkness, where my light couldn't properly see. I was about to make a leap down the broken steps when something far above me thumped hard against the floor.

I sped back up the stairs, bursting into the kitchen as another thump sounded from above me. Little flecks of plaster rained down on me from the ceiling, getting all in my hair and my shoulders. It sounded like someone was moving heavy furniture.

Running through the living room, I took a sharp left turn into the hallway that was just by the front door and quickly found the stairs leading upwards. I was just about to go up, when my brain managed to finally stop my body. Why was I going up there? I stared down at my feet, which refused to move. I was crazy to want to continue my investigation without Harvey's gun. Hell, even with it. Something terrible was happening on Blackfield Island and I was balancing on a precipice of danger. But I had to find out the truth. Would anyone even believe me? No, that didn't matter. In the end, I was really doing this for my own sake-to slake my own curiosity.

My mouth was bone dry, my hands trembling with uncontrollable fear that hadn't quite hit my brain full on yet. I pushed my foot down onto the first stair, and it was like I was trying to move it through quicksand. The second stair was no easier than the first, and neither were any of the others. I reached the top feeling like I had climbed a sheer cliff. I gasped for breath, my lungs aching for air.

Another thump, coming from the left, caused my heart to skip a beat. I turned toward it, preparing myself for another round. It came, and I still jumped. It was coming from a behind a door at the end of the long hallway, cooled by the shattered windows along the wall. I saw dust motes dancing in rays of light, the glass crunching under my feet as I slowly inched my way towards the door.

Gently, I pressed my ear against the finished wood, but heard nothing. The thumping had stopped. At least momentarily. I opened the door, the click of the latch seeming strangely loud to me. The hinges squealed as I pushed into what had once been the office of Clarence Lewiston. The room had been torn apart, looking as if it had been hit by a tornado. Yellowed papers and bits and pieces of books were scattered all about. A desk sat against the wall, upside down, its drawers pulled out and thrown across the room.

There were also tracks in the carpet, only these weren't made by any sort of feet I had ever seen. The bloody tracks were perfectly round circles, about two feet across and embedded deep in the carpet. Whatever left them had been very heavy. I thought for a moment the thumping I had heard had been whatever was behind the unsettling tracks, but they were old. Dried out.

The tracks lead over to the desk and then to the broken window that overlooked the front yard. The frame of the window as caked in dried blood, and some of the glass that was still in it held small fragments of some kind of pale flesh.

While I was staring at the window, the closet door next to the overturned desk opened on its own, with a barely audible click. I whirled around to see it had only come open a bit, not even enough for me to see inside. I spun around, eyes whipping back and forth looking for anything. Another black spirit, anything. But there was nothing.

Cautiously I approached the closet door. I yanked it open, eyes closing, and body cringing reflexively. Again, nothing. It was pitch black in the closet, like the light didn't want to go inside. There was something sitting on the floor and bent down to pick it up.

Just before I could touch the thing, a giant pair of very large, bright white eyes with half-dollar sized black irises appeared above me. I screeched and fell backwards on my ass, the eyes following me the entire time. They were comically huge, almost cartoony, but the way they hung in the air, bobbing up and down out of sync with one another threatened to pull more inarticulate noises from my throat.  
The eyes stared at me, unblinking, and I found myself unable to move at all. Locked in its gaze, I tried to speak but the only noise I could manage was a pathetic groan. There was a sound like paper being torn from a notebook and a large mouth slowly began to appear beneath the eyes. A mouth filled with perfectly straight, bright white teeth. The invisible lips were turned down to make it into a frown.  
The "mouth" began to tilt back, and I heard the sound of air being sucked through clenched teeth. This went on for thirty seconds, uninterrupted, abject terror building in my gut the entire time. Then the mouth opened, not just a little bit, but four feet. From the bottoms of the eyes to the floor. A shriek like a tornado siren erupted from the mouth, blasting me onto my back, digging deeply into my ears painfully. The eyes bulged and little red veins began to sprout around the whiteness. They spun wildly in different directions, occasionally slamming into each other.

I screamed as well, unable to hear myself over the din. Pain shot through my entire being, making my back arch and my toes curl in my boots. The colors, not that there were many, began to wash away all around me, grey slowly taking their place. It dribbled down the walls and over the ceiling and the carpet.

I slammed my mouth shut, tasting blood, shut my eyes and slapped my hands over my ears in an attempt to quiet the noise. It did not work. The howling went on for a full minute before it died down. The ringing in my ears lasted a lot longer, but when the silence finally came I welcomed it.

My eyes opened and I saw standing over me a formless black shape…and within it, the floating eyes. Staring down at me unblinking. If I could have sunk into the floor, I would have at that point. The mouth shot open and the shape dove at me.

I curled up into a little ball, shutting my eyes. But nothing happened. I slowly unfurled myself and saw that the thing had disappeared, leaving me alone and afraid in the grey world.

Sitting on the floor in the empty closet was a small black leather bound book. I climbed to my hands and knees and scurried across the floor to it, scooping it up into my quaking hands. It was cold and heavy, the black cover thick. It looked handmade and was the size of a King James Bible one might find in a church pew, large and hefty.

I quickly flipped through the pages, each one filled to the limit with a neat cursive hand that suggested to me an ordered mind. But I noticed that the closer I got to the end, the more unstable the writer was becoming, their handwriting turning to little better than chicken scratch.

This was the ledger of Maxwell Lewiston. A mixture of personal notes and meaningless (to me at least) charts. Judging by the labeled columns, they were some kind of patient lists. Maxwell had been a doctor of some kind, but there was no mention of the Blackfield clinic in any of the notes.

The first interesting entry that caught my eye was dated January 1901. Maxwell was 27 and had begun work at…Blackfield Asylum. As a doctor. I searched my brain for information on this asylum, but nowhere had I ever read, or heard, anything about it. I continued reading, baffled by this sudden tidbit of information.

"Began my work as a doctor in the asylum today. After watching it being built, it feels strange to be inside. It is much different than I imagine. The screaming patients and surly orderlies paint a picture that goes against the one the Director shows to the public. But that is more than understandable, many of these poor people will never get truly well, will never live a good, healthy life. My first assignment is in the GPI wing, dealing with the terminally sick who are only waiting to die as their brain atrophies into nothingness. My job will be making things easier for them. I hope to eventually be able to deal with more complicated cases as I specialize in psychotherapy."

March 1904. "I've finally been moved out of GPI into the Therapy Wing where most of the research takes place. Stuff beyond lobotomies and shock therapy. I'm eager to get to work, but still have three weeks of shadowing Dr. Ernst, the lead doctor in the wing. I've already been present for the analysis of two new patients, one young Donald Gardner, aged 23, diagnosed with a severe case of dementia praecox. The poor boy sees floating, disembodied faces wherever he finds dark places: drawers, closets, even under his bed. He had to be sedated so the orderlies could strap him to his bed, and he requires a light at all times or he screams until his voice gives out. Better news from home, my first son is born! I've named him after my father, Lucius. My dear Clara made it through the birth like I knew she would, with all her strength and fire. I am so very, very proud of her."

I stopped reading, I could feel the warmth and happiness Maxwell no doubt felt at the time he wrote that entry. But the bit about Donald Gardner disturbed me. Floating faces. I looked up to the empty closet, feeling a chill, then back down to the book. I decided to skip ahead, looking for mention of Clarence.

It didn't take long for me to find it. May 1920. "The experiments are going as planned, but there have been some problems. We're having to bring in three new subjects for the tests after Gardner, Truman, and Belle perished during phase three of the DS last night. The machine nearly exploded from all the energy, but instead it burned out their brains. It'll take a week for the engineers to fix, in the meantime Director Laszlo has tasked me with acquiring the new patients. I'll have to get in contact with my Portland man but it shouldn't be too hard. This setback could not have happened at a worse time."

DS? Burned out their brains? And no mention of the birth of Clarence. I gazed down at the writing, which at this point had changed drastically-the words had significant slant to them that suggested they were written quickly, not in the normal careful hand that seemed normal for Maxwell. The page was covered in ink blots where Maxwell had no doubt tapped his pen as he thought about what to write. Hesitation.

The tone of this passage was so different from the previous one I had just read it was stunning. Gone was the warmth, the excitement of a new career with blossoming possibilities. There were a lot of advancements in psychology during Maxwell's time, but here he was talking about experimenting on patients to such a severe degree that they died.

"What in the hell happened?" I asked aloud, more to myself.

"Pain," came an unexpected reply and I jerked my head up to see the mouth and eyes staring down at me, disembodied and—despite the lack of lips and eyelids-very angry.

I snapped the book shut and clamored backwards to get away from the peering entity. I reached for the door but it slammed shut before I could get to it, making me slam into it with full force. The wood held steady under my weight and the knob was stuck, not budging no matter how hard I twisted it.

I looked over my shoulder just in time to see the eyes and mouth bobbing up and down as they slowly drifted in my direction, staring at me. "Pain." It hissed. "PAIN. PAIN! PAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAIN!" it was screaming now, voice growing louder and louder until I dropped to my knees and covered my ears. It didn't help much. The teeth were clacking together loudly with each syllable, the gap between them growing wider and wider until the bottom teeth touched the floor. "PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN!" A black, misty figure appeared around the mouth and eyes in the split second before I clenched my eyes shut and screamed along with it.

A thin wetness began to leak out of my ears as the screaming continued to escalate. "Stop!" I shouted, knowing full well I wasn't being heard. "I'm sorry! STOP, PLEASE!"

And then it was gone. Silence reigned once again. I slowly opened my eyes and lowered my hands from my ears. The color had again returned to the world only there was something different about the study now. It was drenched with blood. All but where I sat. I picked up the journal and stuffed it into my pocket as I jerked the door open and fled the house.


	9. Chapter 9

I stood in the middle of the street, hunched over, and gasping for breath that I could never quite seem to catch. The Lewiston house loomed over me like a black monolith to terror. The screaming from the face still ringing in my ears, I stumbled further away and farther down the road, moving towards the town. And until the house was completely out of sight, I felt like I was being watched by a being of intense malice.

I passed a sign wrapped in dead, overgrown vines. "City Limits" it said. I thought that was strange that a place like Blackfield had such a thing, but there the faded, green sign was. The road sloped down in at a decent angle and I saw at the bottom the first signs of the town proper. Large, multi-story buildings clustered together, and a single, four way stoplight barely hanging from thin wire across the roads.

I took a seat on the sidewalk at the top of the hill, under the sign. The words of the disembodied mouth still ringing in my ears and the words from Maxwell's journal still hot in my mind. Together they painted a terrible picture. If they were to be believed. But why wouldn't, or shouldn't, I believe them? Until I'd come onto the island, I had scoffed at the notion of ghosts and monsters.

The dead yellow-brown grass crunched beneath me as I shifted to bring my knees up to my chest to rest my head on them. The air was growing colder and the skies were getting cloudy again, and the sun was beginning to set and I did not want to be so far from the docks when it got completely dark. But at least I wasn't in the grey-world anymore. Being there made me feel…dead. Or very weak. And shifting back to the "real world" left me nauseous and disoriented. Was all this trouble really worth it, I wondered to myself. The possibility of dying on this trip hadn't even occurred to me. My job was an inherently safe one, most of my time spent sitting behind a desk or at a table with books piled higher than my head. Sometimes even doing interviews with folks about local customs and stories.

The urge to sleep was coming strong now, and I had to fight to keep my eyes open. Part of me argued that a quick nap couldn't hurt and another countered by saying I'd probably sleep too long and miss my boat out. On that thought, I pulled out my phone.

The screen was black. It didn't register at first and I just stared at it like an idiot. Then I shook it, then I hit it against my palm. The cracked screen flickered to life briefly but not long enough for me to get the time out of it.

"God…," I began, then something rustling in the trees and brush behind me caught my attention and caused me to jump to my feet. I instinctively reached for the gun but grasped at air. My heart sank into my stomach.

I backed out into the road, my eyes darting back and forth along the forest's edge, scanning for any sign of movement. I got what I was looking for. Deep within the thick cluster of trees an enormous shape moved, so big that it caused some of the trees to bend and part as it moved. I could hear its massive footfalls and its wheezing, wet breathing.

Trees fell with loud cracks and I saw a malformed shadow appear. Whatever it was, it had horns that jutted up like spirals from its skull, and its legs were as thick as the trees that fell all around it. I swung its long, lumpy head in my direction and began to move.

A strangled cry died in my throat as I continued to step back until I tripped over the curb. I fell hard onto my ass, the air shooting from my lungs from the impact.

What shoved its head out of the forest is something I can barely describe. Just looking at it made me want to pass out right there on the spot. It was at least twenty feet tall and completely without flesh, making it a pale yellow and white color with red blood veins running all around it. It had no mouth or nostrils, only two large eyes with goat-pupils. Had the pupils not moved in my direction I would have almost thought they were painted on as a mere decoration. It stared at me, slightly inflating and deflating as it breathed by some unknown means, ooze dripping from all over and landing on the ground with audible plops.

The first of its tree-trunk legs appeared as it stepped on the sign indicating the city limits. Tree-trunk is the best way I can think to describe it because that is literally what it looked like. A toe-less trunk of bloody meat with visibly pulsating veins of crimson blood. It could step on me the way we step on ants.

I couldn't help it, I screamed. I whirled to the right and took off down the road towards the town, running as fast as my legs could take me. All fatigue had left my body as terror jump-started my adrenal glands. It helped that the way was mostly downhill, it let me use momentum to carry myself most of the way.

All the while I could hear the heavy footsteps of the creature right behind me. It didn't run as I did, it didn't need to, but as I came upon the first concrete building the footfalls were a considerable distance behind me. I dared a look over my shoulder and saw that the horned creature was halfway down the hill, its massive eyes still staring unblinkingly in my direction.

I rounded the corner under the streetlight going full blast, almost tripping over my own feet in the process. I hit the ground hard with my palms, causing my teeth to slam together, narrowly missing my tongue.

To my immediate left was the old Blackfield Post Office, then what looked to have once been a clothing store. There was a long display window in the front that went from the sidewalk to halfway up the building. I could see long deserted racks where mannequins no doubt once stood, and there was a moth-eaten curtain splayed out along the floor of the raised display. Between the two was a narrow alley piled high with trash bags that bulged with ancient contents. The stench emanating from the alley was overpowering, but I pulled my shirt up over my nose and bit the bullet. I pushed myself into the alley and around the bulging bags, taking my backpack off and setting it down beside me as I ducked behind an adequately tall, and reeking, pile of bags.

With each step that the monstrosity took, I could feel the ground tremble beneath me. The loud snapping sound of the wires holding the traffic lights up told me where it was. I pressed my back against the cold, damp wall of the clothing store and peeked through a small hole out onto the street.

A great shadow washed over the alley as the monster stomped up, and then paused and craned its massive, disfigured head down to look in the windows of the shops. I could see the long-failed traffic light dangling from the spiral horns. Its goat-pupils darted back and forth so quickly it looked as if they were teleporting around. They burned with orange-red light, and even from my little spot I could see the reflections of the windows. I held my breath when it drug its gaze over the alleyway and into the clothing shop display window.

I felt the malice again. Such intense hatred made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It made my bladder weak and my guts twist and turn dangerously. My eyes closed on their own out of some primal instinct most humans don't feel anymore. Every muscle in my body was clenched and on fire. There was nowhere to run from here, so I was screwed if it saw me. So I sat as still as I could. Like a rabbit cornered by a dog.

The creature's mouthless face bulged with its breath, how it was breathing in the first place was a mystery I did not care to try and solve. When it straightened and stomped a few steps further down the road my breath forced its way out of my mouth in a great, relieved sigh. I clapped my hand over my mouth instantly. But it hadn't heard me.

Its stomping eventually got further and further away, and I finally began to relax and take in my surroundings. It really was a good thing that it hadn't seen me because the alley was a death trap. A sheer stone wall ended the alley, jutting up a good twenty feet with little to no places I could have used to climb.

As I looked up at the dead tree branches peeking over the top of the wall something moved out of the corner of my eye, causing me to jump to my feet and clutch my backpack desperately. A door that was absolutely not there before suddenly stood open on the side of the postal building. At first it was only open enough for me to see that the inside was totally black and then it abruptly swung the rest of the way open, slamming on the wall hard enough to send it back a bit.

The darkness within seemed to leak out from the boundaries of the doorway, snaking along the wall in writhing tendrils. That's when I felt something staring at me from inside, standing just beyond the pale light's reach. Instead of malice, as before, I felt a subtle mixture of fear and distrust.

That's when the figure revealed itself: a white outline appearing around it. It was a tall, bulky black figure-like the ones I had seen before at the lighthouse and on the road-and it was wearing something on its head—a hat of some sorts, its flat bill sticking out several inches from the figure's head.

We stared at one another over several long, agonizing seconds before the figure took a step back and motioned for me to follow it inside—waving me into the pitch dark with a thick arm.

I shakily took my flashlight from my pack and moved forward, the sweat coating my hands making it hard to get a good, firm grip on the flashlight, which caused the beam to dance wildly. I got flashes of a grimy floor, overturned tables, and papers scattered everywhere. I nearly tripped over the fallen remains of a gumball machine.

The door slammed shut behind me the second I was over the threshold, which caused me to yelp and whirl around. The figure was gone, or so I thought, until I turned around again and saw my beam hit it as it stood between a long, dusty counter and a large wall filled with holes. The figure motioned again for me to come close, and against my better judgement I went. It pointed to a pile of yellowed letters piled up on the counter. I looked down at them and then back up to the figure, which was now pointing at itself with one clearly defined chubby finger.

Pieces snapped together in my head. "You…you're the postmaster aren't you?" I asked in a shaky voice. "Roy…Roy…," I closed my eyes, trying to remember. "Roy Walsh!" the name came spilling out.

The figure nodded, becoming blurry for a moment before taking a more definite shape. Before me now stood a heavyset older man with little hair on his head, wearing a pair of tiny round spectacles on the end of a bulbous nose. The thing I thought to be a hat turned out to be something close to that. It was just a visor, really, that had no top to cover his head. Kind of like the thing you'd expect a stereotypical bookie to wear. I saw that Roy was smiling a bit, albeit more sadly than anything.

He nodded towards the pile of letters again and I gingerly sat my flashlight down on the counter, pointing towards them. I first looked at the letters without touching them, not entirely sure that something bad wasn't going to happen to me. I could read the first few letters in the pile, each one was simply labeled with a name of a Blackfield resident and their address with a very faded stamp in the upper corner. Nothing seemed out of place so I reached out and let my fingertips brush against the faded paper.

The room around me suddenly filled with a white light so bright that my eyes shut on their own, stinging and watering. There was a brief moment of bitter coldness and then I found myself warm once again, warmer than I had been. The white light faded and was replaced by the natural yellow-orange beams of the sun. I blinked and tried to rub my eyes but my arms wouldn't respond, and when I tried to look down, I found my head would not respond either. In fact, I was not in control of myself at all, and I soon discovered I was not Dr. Sydney Barrows.

Standing in front of me was the blurry outline of a stout woman wearing gaudy jewelry: heavy looking gold earrings and several small diamond rings. Her lips were painted a joyous shade of red and her cheeks were heavy laden with far too much powder. She looked at me with one raised eyebrow.

"Well, Mister Walsh? Have you finally gone deaf, or were you simply not listening? Has the package I sent for last week arrived yet?"

"O-Oh, yes, Ms. Flannigan, yes. I have it right in the back." That is when I knew the truth. I whispered to Mister Walsh but he seemed not to hear me, I had become nothing but a passenger in this vision of the past.

Roy walked to the back room, going through a door I hadn't seen because it was deeper into the building than I had been so far. The door squealed loudly and I could feel Roy's annoyance at it. In the back room there was a young man sorting through the pitiful pile of letters, a skinny boy with a mop of red hair on his head that looked like it hadn't been combed in years.

"Chuck!" Roy barked and the young man looked up, startled. "Did the makeup garbage for Ms. Flannigan show up today?"

Chuck nodded and pointed and Roy looked over to a nearby shelf that had a single package on it. "Y-Yeah, Dad. I put it over in the 'out' section, l-like you always told me."

I felt a surge of anger shoot through Roy, and then felt him push it down quickly. "Alright. Good. Maybe you're finally starting to wise up." Roy stomped over and yanked the package down. It startled him how heavy it was. "Good lord, did she buy the whole damn catalogue?" Roy murmured. He looked to Chuck, "Grover and Leeroy will be here soon, hurry up and get that shit sorted so they can get it out."

"Y-Yes, sir," Chuck nodded and gave a little salute.

That seemed to please Roy, and he turned and marched back into the front—the anger at his son melting away as soon as Ms. Flannigan laid eyes on him.

"Ah, there it is!" Ms. Flannigan said in a grating, high-pitched squeal. She wiggled her painted fingers in delight as Roy gently placed the box down on the counter. He reached below and pulled out a form, after marking a few places he turned it over to Ms. Flannigan, who signed the dotted line and scooped the package up into her arms.

"You have a good day now," Roy said, tipping his visor as Ms. Flannigan whirled around and began to leave. But as her hand touched the glass door there came a deep rumbling from outside as clouds appeared over the sun, casting the area in shadows.

"Oh my, was there a storm in the forecast today?" Ms. Flannigan wondered aloud.

There was another boom, but this time the ground shook violently, throwing Ms. Flannigan out onto the sidewalk on her knees, sending her package sliding out into the street. She screamed at the same time Roy heard glass shattering in the back room. A moment later he heard his son scream in horror and call out for him.

"Daddy!" it was a name that Chuck hadn't used for Roy since he was ten years old.

Roy reached under the counter again and pulled out a small pistol. I could feel the terror and confusion filling him as he forgot all about the screaming Ms. Flannigan and ran into the back to find his son.

He arrived in the back just in time to see his son's twisted legs being pulled through the small glass window near the ceiling just above the "in and out" package shelf. But it was impossible, his brain argued, that window was barely big enough for a five-year-old to squeeze through, much less his 19 year old screw up of a son. Yet, with a continuous sickening crunch, the boy vanished into the growing darkness, his muffled screams halting abruptly as the last of him disappeared.

Roy felt sick, wanted to vomit, and so did I. He raised his gun, vaguely recalling his military training even though up to that point it had never really left him, and fired three shots into the blackness behind the broken window. Whether it made any difference or not, he couldn't tell, nor would he ever learn if it did because a second later something smashed through the front doors and he whirled around just in time to see two thick, pulsating tentacles covered in translucent ooze burst through the back room door. They seized him and he tried to scream but was crushed in the tentacles' grip like an empty soda can.

I, however, could scream. The pain was brief but horrendous causing my vision to once again go white. I felt my knees come into contact with the hard ground, which sent a jolt of pain up through the rest of me and when my vision cleared I found myself on the grimy floor with my flashlight pointing away from the letters and in my direction, lighting the top of my head and casting its shadow across the wall.

The dark figure of Roy Welsh shimmered to my right and I looked up to see that he was no longer a dark outline but something resembling what could be called the stereotypical ghost. Roy Welsh's pale grey figure stood looking at me with a small, sad smile on his face, his eyes downcast to the ground and his hands folded nervously against his stomach.

I stood up slowly, my head pounding harshly. I grasped the flashlight and Roy pointed once again to the letters. "I-I saw," I said in a rough voice, the feeling of being crushed still fresh in my memory.  
Roy shook his head and took a step closer, he pushed his index finger against the pile of letters again, looking at me urgently.

I titled my head and turned to look and saw that the top most letter was labeled with a very familiar name.

"Oliver Norville. 982 East Pickwick, Blackfield Island, Maine…."

I picked up the letter to look at it closer and saw that Roy was nodding again. "You…you think I should go to…the Norville place?" I asked. I blinked and Roy was gone, leaving me standing in the dark with the dusty envelope in my hand. I stared at it, wondering if I should open it and read the enclosed letter. But…I decided against it, gently placing the letter back on the pile.

I looked up and saw the glassless double doors of the entrance to the post office, and that's when I saw that it had become completely dark out. I reached for my phone only to remember that it wasn't working.

Damn.

Harvey might be waiting for me down by the docks, or would be there soon. Hopefully he wouldn't have just left me here like he said he would. I picked up my backpack and ran towards the front doors, glass crunching beneath my feet. My hand was on the door before I stopped and remembered what might be out there waiting for me. The night was dead silent and freezing cold. I looked down and saw a large dark stain on the sidewalk. Ms. Flannigan falling to the ground screaming flashed in my mind. I very carefully lowered myself just enough to fit through the door without opening it, my ears straining in the silence, searching for any clue that the giant thing might be close by.

The streets were empty both ways, the wrecked buildings standing as silent monoliths in the eerie darkness that was poorly lit by the half-hidden moon. I found myself shivering so I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my jacket and turned towards the direction of the docks.

My feet slapping against the asphalt was the only sound to fill the air, echoing off the buildings and reminding me just how alone I was on this cursed island. The road was straight forward enough, with no twists or turns until two hundred yards down the line when the town turned into forest. Every building I passed was in a terrible state of disrepair, and Ms. Flannigan's blood stain was not the only one I came across. There were some spots where the pavement had become so stained with blood that it stretched across the whole road—it was particularly bad in front of the area that was once the Blackfield Cantina.

The Cantina looked as if it had suffered a large fire, the entrance was devoid of doors and just from looking through it with my light I could see everything was charred black. But not enough to disguise some questionable smears along the ceiling, walls and floor. The entryway ended with another arch that lead into a large room that was pitch black. The dining area, no doubt. I debated investigating beyond the entryway but decided against it for the time being. Going into a place where there had been a wholesale slaughter without sunlight to back me up was an unappealing venture.

As soon as I stepped out onto the street to continue my journey I saw something bright orange explode in the sky. It had come from the direction of the docks. For the first time since I'd set foot on the island I felt a bit of hope and joy. I thrust a fist into the air, laughing, and began running at full speed out of town.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I ran as hard as I could, watching the flare disappear into the tree. I was so ecstatic I could vomit. Every muscle in my body screamed for relief, lungs burned, and feet ached. The desire to leave the damned island was the driving force behind my second wind. Hell would be far, far behind me very soon and I could not have been happier. I didn’t care if anyone believed me or not, what would I even write about? I’d have to chalk up the experience as a failure. “No new revelations.” That would make more sense than trying to write a paper about how Blackfield became an island of monsters and ghosts.

The gentle sound of waves lapping against the concrete loading pier was the sweetest of sounds, accompanied only by my shoes slapping hard against the road with each frenzied step. I slowed down, ready to raise my arms and wave at Harvey. It didn’t matter that my lungs felt shriveled, or that my soles pulsated with dull, hot pain. 

Slowly, I came to a complete halt. The adrenaline was already starting to wear off. I was on the ramp. Harvey was not. Only his boat. Hope rotted and twisted into despair within my chest as I whirled around frantically, calling the old fisherman’s name with an increasingly worried tone. That’s when my eyes fell upon the still-open door to the port authority office. Reasons for Harvey’s absence began to materialize in my mind. 

“Oh no,” I whispered, my own voice raspy and weak, inching my way towards the open doorway.

It had only taken me ten minutes running at full steam to get from town to the docks. There were no immediate signs of a struggle, but as I brought my flashlight up to gaze into the building I nearly immediately saw the pulsating algae substance overtaking the area that had been the teenagers’ camping spot. Crimson red nodes were scattered across its surface, and I felt them…staring at me. The things beneath the surface made the algae beast ripple and I could hear the soft moaning as a thick pseudopod reached out for me.

I leapt back, bringing the door slamming shut along with me. That would not hold, I knew. It couldn’t. My attention was then drawn behind me, to the sound of rushing water. I turned just in time to see twisting horns rising out of the water, Harvey’s boat in between them. 

From the frozen water came the fleshless thing, its eyes bloodshot. Harvey’s boat was stuck between its horns and I saw that the old trolling motor had been destroyed—bent nearly in half from the creature’s horn.

Then came the sound of ripping flesh. A mouth was forming on the horned thing’s face. Thick, viscous globules of its bloody pale flesh fell into the water with great splashes as its maw grew larger and larger, filled with thousands of tiny razor-sharp teeth, each of them caked with gore. A wide flat tongue, split into two halves flailed wildly within, and that’s when I saw a familiar hat. Black and wide-brimmed. Bits of scalp still clinging to it, with clumps of black hair. 

I reflexively inhaled deeply, my breath hissing through gritted teeth. 

The first of the horned thing’s massive legs clumped up onto the ramp but I didn’t dare remove my eyes from its face. I felt a rush of air pull me towards it…it was inhaling. I turned to run just as it began to howl. It sounded like a dozen foghorns going off in my ears all at once. I slapped my hands over my ears, but it did little to help. The dirty windows of the port authority office exploded, sending a shower of glass over me. I did the only thing I could think to do: I fell to my knees and rolled up into a tight ball. 

My face pressed hard into the cold, wet concrete of the pier. Fully expecting to die within seconds, my mind was briefly dragged away from the revelation by a rhythmic beating deep within the concrete. The horned thing’s howl finally subsided and the beating grew louder. Death was no longer coming for me, so I slowly sat up, my vision blurry with tears. There was another explosion, this one of metal and glass. Over my head, the black algae leapt, moving far quicker than I had seen thus far. It slammed into the horned thing, which howled with unmistakable rage and pain. 

The horned thing bit into the black algae and there was an audible crunch, followed by large gouts of black blood. I scrambled to my feet and got myself a good thirty yards away before giving in to the urge to stop and look back. 

Watching these two creatures fight it out played hell on my psyche. Two impossible things tearing at one another with unbridled fury. Like something out of a movie, and I could not tear my eyes away from the scene. Nightmares clashed in a whirlwind melee of blood, flesh, and bone. Chunks of the black algae torn away by the horned thing’s massive mouth, and I was finally able to see what was beneath the surface. Bones. Bleached white, non-human bones covered in a black tar substance. The algae went for the horned thing’s torso, branches of it dancing along the pale yellow flesh like veins, causing blood to ooze up wherever it crept. They were consuming each other.

Better them than me.

I turned away and began my long walk back towards the town. The roars and cries of the battle behind me eventually faded into nothingness. Harvey was gone, and so was my hope of getting back to safety. Helplessness settled in with the fear. What could I do now but move forward? Answers to all of this were all I had to look forward to now. If I was lucky, maybe they would help me find a way home.

Darkness set in over Blackfield as I once again entered the city limits. The burnt out diner was to my right and I stopped to once again gaze into the open doorway. I felt a flash of burning pain in the backs of my eyes, which caused me to flinch and cover my face with my hands. I stumbled back and something bumped into me.

“Hey! You alright?” A voice called out to me.

I jerked my head up and saw that I was once again surrounded by greyness, and that a very large sedan was at my side. Inside it was a balding man, head gleaming in the sunlight, who was leaning out of the window and looking at me with one raise eyebrow. 

“I, uh, I’m—,” I began.

“S’a good thing I saw you stumbling around as I was coming up, might of hit ya going full speed otherwise. You don’t look so good, if you don’t mind me saying so.” The sedan lurched and I heard gears change.

I held up a hand before he was halfway out, “I’m fine, really. Bit of a headache hit me all at once.” 

The man stopped, shrugged, and got back in his car. I heard the gears shift again. I took a few steps back onto the curb and gave the man a small wave as his ship-of-a-car coasted on down the roads. I watched until it went around a corner, then looked around to gauge my surroundings.

It was happening again. Visions of the past. Across the road stood the diner, fully intact and running. A couple was just leaving as a man in fishing gear stepped out of their way, tipping his hat to them before going inside himself. My eyes travelled upwards and there was the Blackfield Cantina sign in all its glory. A well-painted pig in a chef’s hat holding a platter of what looked to be fried fish winked down at all who passed by. I couldn’t shake the feeling that its other eye was staring right at me. 

This time I made sure to look both ways before crossing the street. I felt out of place in my winter coat, with a backpack bouncing around my shoulders, but no one seemed to notice. Or maybe didn’t care. Just as I was about to push through the doors into the cantina I saw, from the corner of my eye, a heavyset woman entering the post office a few buildings down. 

Immediately my senses were barraged by the varying smells of the cantina. Frying fish, grilling meat. And the noise. The doors must have been soundproof because the cacophony of voices made me stop in my tracks. The Blackfield Cantina was filled to capacity. Two dozen tables were crowded with men and women hunching close to one another over half-eaten meals to talk. The bar was long, and a very shiny chrome, and filled with fishermen chattering over frosty mugs of beer. More than once, as I looked around, I thought I saw some people looking at me. 

A woman wearing a short skirt and apron suddenly appeared in front of me. “Can I help you find a seat, hon?” she asked me in a sickly sweet voice, obviously practiced from years of having to deal with customers. 

“Looks like, uh, you’re all filled up.” I responded, feeling very warm in my coat now. 

If the waitress, who wore a tag naming her ‘Phyllis’, noticed my discomfort she didn’t acknowledge it. “Oh, I think we have a few spots left at the bar,” she said and motioned for me to follow.   
I did so, winding through the narrow spaces between tables. She was right, stuck between two swarthy looking fellows was an open stool. Though I swore that it hadn’t been there before, I sat as Phyllis extended her hand. She reached over my shoulder and slipped a menu into my hands. 

“Gerry will be right with you in just oooone second.” Phyllis winked at me, her painted lips curling up in the corners and sliding back ever-so-slightly to expose white, straight teeth. It made me want to run out of the place but I also felt stuck to the stool now. 

I nodded once, trying to match her smile. I felt like I failed as Phyllis turned on her heels and waded back into the crowd. I turned to open the menu and noticed that neither man sitting beside me was looking up from his beer. In fact, it didn’t look like either one was moving at all. I didn’t say anything.

“What can I get ya?” came a deep voice and I looked up to see the bushy bearded Gerald Hardline across from me behind the bar. He was smiling, like Phyllis, and my calves began to itch. 

“Hmm,” I tore my eyes away from his face and looked down at the menu. I froze as I saw the typed words oozing down the pages like unsettled fresh ink. A melted caricature of the pig from the sign on the front of the building glared at me with a downturned mouth full of broken teeth, its chin drooping further and further towards the bottom of the menu the longer I stared. 

Without warning the menu was jerked from my hands and my vision was once again filled with smiling Gerald Hardline. “How ‘bout the special?” The man was well over six feet tall, and at least a hundred pounds heavier than me. To say I felt dwarfed at his presence would be an understatement. 

Before I can say another word, he is gone behind the swinging door at the opposite end of the bar, moving quite unlike someone who was as heavy as he was. I am once again left alone, stuck between a pair of statues. The chatter of the cantina was never very clear to begin with but the longer I sit in the stool the more I begin to notice the noise blending together into a singular muttering of varying pitches. There is something accusatory about it that makes my palms sweat. I find myself cupping my hands together to keep them from shaking. 

“Shoulda known better,” said the fisherman to my right, and I noticed sea water slowly flowing out from beneath his wide brimmed hat, trickling down the sides of his face and into his plaid shirt and overalls. 

“Than to come in here.” Said the one to my left, looking at me with eyes covered in a grey-blue film. My terrified face reflected within them. 

“Shouldn’t have come to the island at all,” Phyllis whispered into my ear, and a chill went down my spine. I didn’t turn to look at her, but I could feel her gaze. 

The murmur grew louder and black smoke began to pour from the bottom of the swinging door that lead to the kitchen.

“TOO LATE NOW!” came Gerald’s howling voice from the back. “NOW YER GONNA BE JUST LIKE US!” 

The kitchen door exploded off its hinges with a loud boom, the force sent me flying backwards off the stool. As I hit the floor I saw the dozens and dozens of faces of the patrons turned in my direction, and melting. Right off the bones. Then everything went black, save for a small fiery orange glow in the distance.   
When the pain subsided, I pushed myself up on my elbows. I coughed, feeling soot and dirt in my mouth and caking my tongue. It did little to help. I needed water. I forced myself onto one knee, pain shooting up and down my spine, and swung my backpack onto the ground. I had it halfway unzipped when I heard the unmistakable sound of fire crackling. 

An intense heat came upon me as I raised my head. Standing where the bar had been was an enormous, burning figure. Its shape was that of the cartoony pig mascot of the cantina. Only it wasn’t so cartoony now. Its malformed head, too large for its neck, fell back and from its twisted maw came a high pitched squeal mixed with cries that could only be human. It was wearing the tattered remains of an apron stained with grease, and its one black eye glimmered in the fire, focused right on me. From its middle of its bulbous chest, out of the tattered and charred apron, emerged an all too familiar, bearded face. 

Gerald Hardline, or a…simulacrum of him, anyway. White eyes bulged from a half crushed skull. A mouth of broken teeth worked up and down in silent horror. Flesh bubbled, sloughed away, reformed…repeating over and over again. The smell of burnt flesh, pork, and fish permeated the air. 

My empty stomach heaved and crumpled in on itself, trying to eject content that wasn’t there. I could only think of getting away. The pain had become secondary, dulled by adrenaline. I looked around frantically and soon realized I could no longer find the exit. The whole cantina had become a single, burnt and blackened room filled with the ruins of tables and chairs and human remains.

Another horrible squeal brought me back to the monster, who was now slowly lumbering towards me on melting pig feet. With each step it left behind burning clumps of flesh and sizzling fat. In one barely recognizable hand it held a large, jagged piece of plate. Its platter. It was stained a deep red around the broken razor edges. 

The monster reeled back, raising its gory weapon. Its dripping head finally broke from the neck and went tumbling down its lumpy back, landing on the floor with a nauseous thump. Instantaneously it began to grow a new one, just as melted, just as perilously sitting upon unstable shoulders. 

I screamed, unable to stop myself, and grabbed my backpack with one hand. Unfortunately I had neglected to close it, and as I yanked it towards my body, while leaping, one of my notebooks came flying out. “NO!” I shouted as it sailed into the wall to my left, sending loose papers and news clippings all over the floor. 

The monster’s weapon came crashing down where I had just been, fracturing the floor and sending slivers of wood flying in every direction. It followed through by stepping between me and my lost notebook. Panic not over the possibility of being cleaved in two but of losing my notes struck my heart and brain as well as any sharp object.   
It swung again, and I managed to duck the wide arc and scramble back over some wreckage. The monster’s fire flashed up, burning brighter. Its squeals and gurgling huffs grating against my ears. I tried to ignore the twisted Gerald face in its chest. 

I picked up a chunk of what I figured to be wood and hucked it at the creature. It was all I could think to do. It sailed true, hitting the creature in the ‘face.’ It sunk into the malleable flesh, quickly becoming a part of it. It snorted at me, in what I sensed as amusement. By now the room was starting to fill with smoke, making it hard for me to breath. I pulled the collar of my shirt out from under my coat and up over my nose and mouth. 

A great crack from up above was followed by falling wooden beams. I reflexively ducked as I snaked my way around charred debris. The pig-thing was slow, but I had nowhere else to run. Maybe I would get lucky and merely be crushed beneath the collapsing roof, instead of being burned alive or cut in half. In the meantime I was determined to get my notes back. 

What’s the point? A small voice whispered in the back of my mind. Gonna die anyway.

I pushed it away, clenching my teeth and focusing through the smog. A burning chunk of fat sailed by me, missing my face by less than a foot. The pig-thing growled and reached into itself for another shot. 

I clamored over a particularly dusty pile of burnt tables, soot coating me from head to toe. My left hand missed the handhold I reached for, sending me tumbling down head over heels to the floor, ending with me sitting up on my ass. Another bit of fat sailed over my head, hitting the wall with a wet splat. 

My notebook was only a few feet away now, so I took to my hands and knees and crawled forward as fast as I could. Slivers of wood stabbed my palms, dug themselves into my knees. The pig-thing was hobbling towards me now, on an intercept course. I found myself screaming, hand shooting out to the notebook. 

The ceiling imploded, bathing the room in moonlight. The pig-thing raised its arms to shield itself from the bigger chunks of wood and concrete. I barely noticed, I had swooped upon my scattered stuff like a starving predator, gathering them back into a pile as quickly as I could so it could all be shoved back into my backpack. 

I looked up just in time to see something small fall from the hole in the ceiling and sink into the pig-things exposed neck. Its single black eye rolled down to whatever it was and it made a high pitched squeal unlike what it had before. 

It exploded. I curled up into a little ball. 

“Get over here!” A voice drifted down from the hole, a small shadow appearing over the edge. Its eyes glowed strangely, a luminescent green. As bits of the pig-thing rained down all around me, I managed to lift my head slightly to see the figure beckoning at me with one gloved hand. A rope dropped down and the figure shook it. “Hurry, before it gets a chance to reform!” 

I didn’t need another word. I struggled to my feet and limped as fast as I could to the rope. “I don’t think I can…” I called up.

“Just tie it around your waist, I’ll get ya up!” the figure pulled back from the hole.

I did as I was told, faint doubt tingling in my brain. At this point I didn’t care if I was moving out of a bad situation into another. I just wanted out. 

With the rope secured, I called up, “O-Okay, I got it!” I was promptly yanked off my feet, which caused me to yelp in surprise. I managed a final peek at the floor as I sailed over the edge of the hole: the pig-thing was a lump of pulsating fire and pink flesh, I could see Gerald Hardline’s face twisting in pain within it.


End file.
